Discovered the ancestors of koalas, weighing more than a ton

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This species is already extinct.

Palaeontologists from Monash University on the fossils reconstructed image and the body of a deceased relative of wombats and koalas — Palorchestes azael. Members of the species weighed more than a ton, and elbow joints were fixed. A study published in the journal PLoS ONE, reports the Chronicle.info with reference to the Telegraph.

Palorchestes azael belong to the family polaresco, which includes some living marsupials, for example, wombats and koalas. Large members of the family lived mainly in the South-East of Australia and appeared in the age of Oligocene or 33.9 to 23 million years ago.

The researchers studied the remains of Palorchestes azael, who, according to the calculations, weighed about 500 kg. However, the largest members of the species can weigh more than a ton, the researchers said.

Length of the animal, the remains of which were studied by the paleontologists, was 2.5 m. In examining bones, researchers have found that elbow joints of the forelimbs in herbivores was fixed — the bones in it were located at an angle of approximately 100° to each other.

Scientists were not aware of any placental or marsupial with a similar structure of the elbow joints, the study says. Perhaps such restrictions are offset by the very mobile shoulder joints.

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