The tale of a giant, prehistoric kangaroo... Or three!

Palaeo Jam

We’re back for Season 3, and we begin in the palaeo lab at Flinders University!

We’re delighted that in this first episode of the new season, Palaeo Jam host Michael Mills chats with Dr Isaac Kerr about a remarkable research paper, just published, that seeks to more clearly define what is and what isn’t a Protemnodon… AKA a giant, prehistoric kangaroo!

During the course of the conversation, we hear from Isaac about the features that define this particular group of giant, prehistoric marsupials, but also, the fascinating differences amongst them. We talk about about who’s in, and who’s out of the genus, and along the way, we hear about the fascinating ways in which these extraordinary kangaroos lived their lives, depending upon where they lived. As a bonus, we also hear about how Isaac and his team were able to ditch a previously described species by none other than Sir Richard Owen!

You can follow Dr Isaac Kerr on Twitter at @isaacarkerr https://twitter.com/IsaacARKerr

You can read the full 250 plus pages of this remarkable paper, here…

https://mapress.com/mt/article/view/megataxa.11.1.1

Check out the following article by Isaac in The Conversation…

https://theconversation.com/we-found-three-new-species-of-extinct-giant-kangaroo-and-we-dont-know-why-they-died-out-when-their-cousins-survived-227857

Here’s a link to the Flinders University palaeo team…

https://sites.flinders.edu.au/palaeontology/

And here’s an article on the ABC about this amazing paper…

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-15/three-unique-extinct-kangaroo-species-discovered-flinders-uni/103699606

You can find Michael Mills at @heapsgood https://twitter.com/Heapsgood

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At Palaeo Jam, we now have an Instagram account at https://www.instagram.com/palaeo_jam