Ben Kear commented: "This discovery is important because what we have found is the oldest direct ancestor of our modern Skippy. It didn't look all that different from today's kangaroos and it was hopping." He is also reported in The Age as saying, “Even 25 million years ago, kangaroos were kind of doing what they do today. What we're looking at is effectively a winning body plan." The La Trobe media report goes on to state, “The Ngamaroo roamed an Australian landscape that was wetter, with more abundant and greener foliage. Its diet comprised softer types of vegetation than the tough grasses eaten by the modern kangaroo, which has grinding teeth, and processes its food in the gut in a similar way to the horse.”

La Trobe: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/2008/mediarelease_2008-37.php

The Age:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/ngamaroo--skippys-25millionyearold-ancestor-20080603-2lcq.html

ED. COM. Michael Archer is a passionate anti-creationist, but this new fossil with his name attached to it fits into Biblical rather than evolutionary biology. If kangaroos have been “doing what they do today” for 25 million years, that means they have reproduced after their kind, just as Genesis says. The description of the Australian landscape as being wetter and covered with abundant soft green foliage also fits the Biblical history of the world. The Bible describes an original good world, watered by a daily mist – an environment suitable for abundant soft foliage. After Noah’s flood, that climate became harsher and more erratic, and many places, such as Australia, could no longer sustain lush vegetation and slowly desertified as we approach the present.

For our non-Australian readers, kangaroos are sometimes referred to as “Skippy” after a character in a 1960s TV programme “Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo”. (Ref. marsupials, diet, deserts)