Megalibgwilia
| Megalibgwilia | ||||||||||||
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Humerus of Megalibgwilia ramsayi , the holotype of the species |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Miocene to Pleistocene | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Megalibgwilia | ||||||||||||
| Griffiths , Wells & Barrie , 1991 | ||||||||||||
Megalibgwilia is a genus of monotremes from the Early Miocene to the Late Pleistocene in Australia.
Origin of name
The generic name Megalibgwilia is derived from the word libgwil in the Aboriginal language Wembawemba , libgwil means " short-billed hedgehog ". Thus Megalibgwilia is the "large short-billed hedgehog".
features
Megalibgwilia was 55 cm long and thus only 10 cm longer than the recent short-billed urchin, but about as large as the recent western long- billed urchin . From Megalibgwilia today u. A. A complete skull is known. It had a long, sturdy and slightly curved beak, a wide arched palate with transverse bone grooves, a slightly domed skull and a deep post-temporal fossa. Megalibgwilia likely fed on insects and survived longer in Tasmania than the rest of Australia.
species
Two types are known:
- Megalibgwilia ramsayi (OWEN, 1884) lived in the late Pleistocene and belonged to u. A. the local fauna of the Naracoorte World Heritage area , South Australia.
- Megalibgwilia robusta (DUN, 1896) lived in the early to late Miocene and was part of the local fauna of Gulgong Gold Field , Western Australia.
literature
- Long, Archer, Flannery, Hand: Prehistoric Mammals of Australia and New Guinea, one hundred million years of evolution . Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore / London 2002, ISBN 0-8018-7223-5
- Danielle Clode: Prehistoric Giants: the Megafauna of Australia . Museum Victoria, Melbourne 2009, ISBN 978-0-9803813-2-0