From Mary Voice, Melbourne, Australia
Your interview with Dave Hone raises something I, an Australian, have long pondered. Our wonderful Macropodidae (kangaroos and wallabies) have graceful and efficient locomotion by bounding on two powerful hind legs, while their two forelimbs are relatively small. This structure looks quite similar to many of the dinosaur family, who also had two powerful hind legs, but they are always portrayed as running like modern birds, one leg after another (2 May, p 40).
Is there any evidence in the fossil record that some of the many varieties did evolve a bounding gait, with appropriate physical structure. Maybe one or two of the herbivores, as kangaroos are herbivores? After all, many dinosaurs had nearly the right physique and had about 160 million years to evolve an efficient bounding system.
