Come Meet Your Cousin, the Kangaroo

According to Australian researchers, a new study is now claiming that kangaroos are genetically more similar to humans and may have first evolved in China.

Researches in Australia have mapped the genetic makeup of the Australian marsupials and discovered that much of the marsupial’s genetic code parallel the genome for humans.

Jenny Graves from the government-backed Centre of Excellence for Kangaroo Genomics explains that, “There are a few differences, we have a few more of this, a few less of that, but they are the same genes and a lot of them are in the same order.”

“There is great chunks of the human genome which is sitting right there in the kangaroo genome.”

The report also continues stating how it appears that “humans and kangaroos last shared an ancestor at least 150 million years ago, while mice and humans diverged from one another only 70 million years ago.”

Kangaroos are also believed to have first evolved in China, but migrated across the Americas to Australia and even Antarctica.

Source: chinadaily