SCIENCE DESK

AN ancient kangaroo is believed to gone extinct by drowning because it could not control the length of its bounce.

The enormous Macropus Giganticus Giganticus, which stood seventy metres high on its hind legs, had one fatal flaw: it bounced so far that often as not it found itself in the ocean after one bounce too many.

“You’re talking bounces of up to five kilometres, or more,” said Les Pouch, director of the Foundation for Ancient Australian Fauna (FAAF).

“I’ve spent my life studying these big buggers. They go back as far as Gondwanaland when there was plenty of space for their bounce. Then Australia broke away and they began to bounce too far for their own good. Australia was just too small for them and they couldn’t adapt.”

“Eventually, they all wound up in the ocean. The last one drowned off Bondi about a hundred thousand years ago.”