Wednesday 10 April 2019

Extinct 'Pig-Footed Bandicoot' Galloped Around Australia Like a Wonky Little Horse


By Brandon Specktor, Senior Writer | March 25, 2019 04:01pm ET
Scientists have discovered a new species of pig-footed bandicoot — an extinct Australian marsupial that looks like a kangaroo, an opossum and a deer got a bit too friendly at the local watering hole — and it's about as strange as you'd hope.
Pig-footed bandicoots are long-eared, long-tailed herbivores that once scurried about the sandy, arid stretches of central and western Australia for tens of thousands of years before going extinct in the 1950s. Maxing out with a body mass of about 1.3 pounds (600 grams; roughly the weight of a basketball) and a length of about 10 inches (26 centimeters), these mammals are considered to be among the smallest grazing animals that ever lived, according to the authors of a new study published March 13 in the journal Zootaxa.
With two functional toes on their front legs and only one on each hind leg, the bandicoots have a bit of an assembled-by-committee look. However, according to interviews conducted with aboriginal tribe members in the 1980s, the tripod toe arrangement did not hinder the little beasts from "galloping" at surprisingly high speeds when distressed.


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