Rapid Pliocene adaptive radiation of modern kangaroos

Abstract

Secrets revealed by kangaroo teeth The teeth of mammals display complex adaptations to diet and can thus provide a window into the environments of extinct species. Couzens and Prideaux used such a window to examine the expansion and diversification of kangaroos, Australia's largest herbivores (see the Perspective by Polly). True kangaroos diversified not in response to drying in the Miocene, as suggested by molecular results, but rather as grasslands expanded during the Pliocene. Furthermore, the now-extinct short-faced kangaroos were not declining because of increases in aridity at the end of the Pleistocene but instead were experiencing an increase in dietary divergence. Science , this issue p. 72 ; see also p. 25