CANBERRA, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) -- Australian scientists have discovered a new fossil kangaroo species, revealing ancient evolutionary links between Australia and the island of New Guinea.
Paleontologists have identified a new extinct wallaby species, Dorcopsoides cowpatensis, from fossils discovered in central Australia, closely related to New Guinea's living forest-wallabies, a group known as Dorcopsini, according to a statement released Thursday by Australia's Flinders University.
About 12 million years ago, forest-wallabies migrated from Australia to New Guinea via a land-bridge, rising sea levels later formed the Torres Strait, isolating the New Guinea populations, it said.
While forest-wallabies vanished from Australia around five million years ago, their descendants still thrive in New Guinea's rainforests today, said the study's lead author Isaac Kerr from Flinders University.
"When the Torres Strait flooded again, however, these populations of animals became disconnected from their Australian relatives, and so didn't experience the dramatic drying-out that still defines much of Australia," Kerr said.
The fossil species lived in dry, bushland environments, contrasting sharply with the wet, forested and mountainous habitats of its modern relatives, said the study published in Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Paleontology, the official journal of the Australasian Paleontologists, a specialist group of the Geological Society of Australia.
Kerr noted that their visits to Papua New Guinea revealed the shared heritage between the two nations, both today and in prehistoric times.
Researchers hope their study of Australian-Papuan evolutionary links will strengthen ties across the Torres Strait, the waterway between Australia and Papua New Guinea. ■