by Brian Thomas, Ph.D., and Timothy Clarey, Ph.D.
Evolutionary narratives insist that kangaroos, and the marsupials they represent, evolved millions of years ago in Australia. Supposedly, that’s why today they only live there. In contrast, Genesis teaches that all animals—including kangaroos—migrated to their present locations from the Ark’s landing place “on the mountains of Ararat”1 in or near modern-day Turkey. New evidence fits this biblical option.
University of Madras archaeologist Jinu Koshy stumbled upon a jackpot. He found thousands of unique pieces of rock art in remote India while surveying the western Andhra Pradesh region. The red ochre pictographs include stick-figured humans, crude cows, deer, boar, and creatures that Koshy says look more like some kind of kangaroo than any other animal.
Marsupials in India? According to an article in an Indian online magazine named Scroll, the pictograph shapes show kangaroo similarities, including front limbs held aloft, kangaroo-like snouts, and possible pouches.2
In 2017, I briefly explained Genesis-based marsupial expectations: “Neither a creation-based nor an evolution-believing scientist was there to observe and record when marsupials actually got to Australia, so both must suggest and test scenarios.”3 Evidence of kangaroos in India add new data to help test the two scenarios.
Evolution’s obstacle has kangaroos living strictly in Australia long before ancient inhabitants painted these pictographs in India. This assumption forced Koshy to make a strange suggestion: Possibly the ancient rock artists worked from long-distant memories of ancestors who had back-migrated from Australia to India.
Koshy’s colleague and pictograph expert Chandramouli Navuluri from Pondicherry University “finds all this ridiculous,” according to Scroll. Similarly, an Australian rock art expert who wished to remain anonymous “dismissed Koshy’s interpretation.”2 But neither expert offered a better option.
One optional explanation involves swapping evolutionary assumptions for the well-attested history from the book of Genesis.
Just because kangaroos live only in Australia today doesn’t mean they only lived in Australia in the past, especially in the first centuries after the Flood. After all, India lies right on the route between Turkey and Australia—it’s a relatively short hop.
Possibly predators wiped out the post-Flood kangaroos from Asia and elsewhere but not from Australia. A narrower expanse of ocean separated Australia from Papua New Guinea during the peak of the Ice Age. Marsupials may have crossed those narrow waters before sea levels rose to expand the sea between the continents to today’s shorelines, barring the water passage for late-arriving predators.
Evidence of marsupials in India’s recent past exactly fits biblical expectations. 
Earth’s rising sea level would have provided Australian marsupials with a watery shield of protection.4 Evidence of marsupials in India’s recent past exactly fits biblical expectations.
References
1. Genesis 8:4.
2. Chandrasekaran, A. Did kangaroos ever live in India? A new discovery has some archaeologists hopping with excitement. Scroll.in. Posted on scroll.in May 13, 2019, accessed May 15, 2019.
3. Thomas, B. 2017. Why Do Kangaroos Live Only in Australia? Acts & Facts. 46 (2): 20.
4. Clarey, T. 2016. The Ice Age and the Scattering of Nations. Acts & Facts. 45 (8): 9.
*Dr. Thomas and Dr. Clarey are Research Associates at the Institute for Creation Research
