Procoptodon was a genus of giant short-faced kangaroos that lived in Australia roughly 2.6 million to 40,000 years ago, disappearing not long after humans first arrived on the continent.
Bigger than any kangaroo alive today
The largest species, Procoptodon goliah, could stand around 2 meters (6.5 ft) tall and is estimated to have weighed considerably more than any living kangaroo — roughly two to three times the weight of a large modern red kangaroo.
A strange foot for a kangaroo
Unlike modern kangaroos, which hop on four visible toes, Procoptodon's feet had essentially just one large, functional toe on each foot — more like a single stiff hoof. Its face was also notably shorter and flatter than a modern kangaroo's, which is where the "short-faced" name comes from.
Part of Australia's vanished megafauna
Procoptodon was one of many large Australian animals — collectively called Pleistocene megafauna — that went extinct within a few thousand years of humans first arriving on the continent, around 50,000 years ago. Scientists still debate how much of that extinction wave was driven by human hunting versus a changing climate, and it was likely some combination of both.