Red-necked wallaby
In a clear example of how evolution is driven by environmental change, a study by scientists at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), led by Professor Matthew J. Phillips, has shown how closely the evolution of Australia’s kangaroos and wallabies maps onto the continent’s long-term climate history. Their findings are published in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.
By tracing the climate record over the last 18 million years and comparing it with the fossil record, the team showed that increasing aridity and habitat variability around 7–9 million years ago coincided with the emergence of the macropodines — the group to which most modern kangaroos and wallabies belong. This was followed by the appearance of incipient grasslands around 5–4.5 million years ago, a period that saw a major diversification of kangaroo and wallaby species.
As expected, there is no evidence of sudden creation without ancestors 6,000–10,000 years ago, nor of a wholesale biological reset following a global flood a few thousand years ago. Instead, the record is one of gradual evolution over deep time, driven by environmental change. The long-predicted failure of the Theory of Evolution to explain and make sense of the evidence once again failed to materialise, as it has every time creationists have claimed it was imminent over the past half-century.
Rather than contradicting evolutionary theory, the evidence fits it like a hand in a glove, adding yet another piece to the growing mountain of supporting data. Once again, the underpinning theory of modern biology is shown to be supported by independent lines of evidence from geology, climatology, and palaeontology, all converging on the same conclusion: life has evolved on an ancient planet responding continuously to changing environments.
The Evolution of Macropodines (Kangaroos and Wallabies). Macropodines are the most diverse and familiar subgroup of the kangaroo family (Macropodidae), encompassing most modern kangaroos and wallabies. Their evolutionary history provides a textbook example of how large mammals respond adaptively to long-term environmental change.The work of Professor Phillips’s team is explained in a QUT news release.
Origins in forested Australia
Early macropods first appeared in the fossil record over 20 million years ago, at a time when much of Australia was covered in moist forests. These ancestral forms were relatively small, forest-dwelling animals adapted for browsing rather than grazing, with low-crowned teeth and more generalised limb anatomy.
Climate change as an evolutionary driver
From about 10 million years ago, Australia experienced increasing aridity as global climates cooled and the continent drifted northwards. Between roughly 7 and 9 million years ago, fluctuating climates and expanding open habitats coincided with the emergence of macropodines as a distinct group. Rather than being a sudden appearance, this represents a branching event within an already diverse macropod lineage.
Grasslands and diversification
The spread of grasslands around 5–4.5 million years ago triggered a major evolutionary radiation. Many macropodines evolved high-crowned (hypsodont) teeth capable of coping with abrasive, silica-rich grasses, alongside changes in jaw mechanics and gut physiology. At the same time, selection favoured longer, more elastic hind limbs and specialised tendons, making hopping an exceptionally energy-efficient mode of locomotion across open terrain.
Adaptive radiation, not replacement
Importantly, macropodine evolution did not involve the wholesale replacement of earlier forms. Browsing and mixed-feeding wallabies persisted alongside grazing kangaroos, illustrating how diversification allows multiple ecological strategies to coexist within the same broader lineage.
Why macropodines matter
Macropodines neatly illustrate several core evolutionary principles: gradual change over deep time, adaptation driven by environmental pressures, and diversification through ecological opportunity. Their history aligns fossil evidence, molecular phylogenetics, and palaeoclimate data into a single, coherent narrative — one that is fundamentally incompatible with ideas of recent creation or sudden biological resets.
Study maps climate-related evolution of modern kangaroos and wallabies
A QUT-led study has found how increasing aridity and habitat variation and the subsequent emergence of grasslands shaped the evolution of modern kangaroos and wallabies.
- Modern kangaroos did not evolve immediately after the rainforest contracted
- The kangaroo family tree has had two major expansions in the past nine million years
- Only the wombats remain from the once dominant large herbivores whose extinction coincided with the rise of modern kangaroos and wallabies
The study, published in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, resolves longstanding questions about when, and why, these iconic Australian marsupials diversified.
First author PhD researcher Clelia Gauthier, from QUT’s School of Biology and Environmental Science, said the researchers found that the kangaroo family tree expanded in two major bursts over the past 9 million years.
The first was during a late Miocene period of increasing dryness around 7-9 million years ago, and again in the Early Pliocene as grasslands began to emerge across the continent around 5-4.5 million years ago. Our research has generated the most comprehensive molecular evolutionary dataset to date by combining complete mitochondrial genomes with 11 nuclear genes across all living kangaroo and wallaby genera.
>By placing genetic evidence alongside Australia’s fossil record, we could see that modern kangaroos didn’t evolve immediately after rainforest contraction, as has often been thought. Instead, they diversified later, initially as Australia’s habitats became drier and more varied, and then again as the expansion of grasses favoured the grazing and mixed feeding lineages we see today.
Dr. Clélia Gauthier, first author
School of Biology and Environmental Science
Queensland University of Technology,
Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
Professor Matthew Phillips said the findings clarified how environmental pressures reshaped the competitive landscape for marsupial herbivores.
The rise of modern kangaroos and wallabies coincided with the extinction of many of the formerly dominant large herbivores from the group that now only includes wombats. More arid and variable habitats likely shifted the balance of evolutionary competition in favour of kangaroos and wallabies, because travelling further for water and poorer quality forage increases the energetic benefits of their hopping and gut adaptations.
Professor Matthew J. Phillips, lead author
School of Biology and Environmental Science
Queensland University of Technology,
Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
The study revealed:
- Macropodines (the group containing most modern kangaroos and wallabies) originated around 7-9 million years ago, as aridity and habitat variability increased.
- The second major diversification occurred around 5-4.5 million years ago, coinciding with the earliest emergence of incipient grasslands.
- The iconic “Macropus” group - including kangaroo, wallaroo, and wallaby species - rapidly diversified during this second period.
- Fossil evidence, including the earliest macropodine fossils from around eight million years ago, closely matches the molecular findings.
QUT researchers on the project include Clelia Gauthier, William G. Dodt, Manuela Cascini, Zachary K. Stewart, Professor Peter J. Prentis, and Professor Matthew Phillips, all from the School of Biology and Environmental Science, the Centre for Environment and Society and the Centre for Agriculture and the Bioeconomy, along with national and international collaborators:
The researchers are from QUT’s School of Biology and Environmental Science and Centre for Agriculture and the Bioeconomy, working alongside colleagues from the Research Centre for Ecosystem Resilience at the Botanic Gardens of Sydney, the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre in Frankfurt, from the South Australian Museum, The University of Adelaide, the Australian Museum Research Institute, Macquarie University, Flinders University, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage. Publication:
As so often happens when creationist claims are confronted with real evidence, the promised contradictions simply fail to appear. Instead of sudden origins, missing ancestors, or biological discontinuities that would demand supernatural intervention, the history of kangaroos and wallabies unfolds exactly as evolutionary theory predicts: stepwise change over millions of years, tightly coupled to well-documented shifts in climate and habitat. There is no need for ad hoc explanations, special pleading, or appeals to events for which there is no physical trace.
What makes this case particularly damaging for creationist narratives is the convergence of independent lines of evidence. Fossils chart morphological change through time, molecular phylogenetics reconstructs relationships and divergence dates, and palaeoclimate data documents the environmental pressures driving those changes. Each line of evidence was developed independently, yet all point to the same conclusion. This is not coincidence; it is what a robust explanatory framework looks like.
Once again, the Theory of Evolution does exactly what its critics insist it cannot do: it explains the data, makes sense of new discoveries, and integrates them seamlessly into a broader understanding of life on Earth. Kangaroos and wallabies are not curiosities that need rescuing by special creation, but another clear demonstration that life evolves in response to changing environments on an ancient planet — a conclusion supported not by ideology, but by evidence.
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