Palorchestidae
| Palorchestidae | ||||||||||||
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Oligocene to Pleistocene | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Palorchestidae | ||||||||||||
| Tate , 1948; sensu Archer & Bartholomai , 1978 | ||||||||||||
The Palorchestidae are a family of the Australian-New Guinean megafauna within the Vombatiformes . Animals belonging to this family existed from the late Oligocene to the late Pleistocene and were among the most striking marsupial mammals in geological history.
features
The Palorchestidae, the bag tapirs, are among the most conspicuous animals of the Australian megafauna. They had long forelegs, short hind legs, a long snout, which presumably had a trunk similar to the recent tapir , a wombat-like lower jaw, a probably long tongue and high-crowned molars . Adult animals have the tooth formula I 1-3 / 1, C 1 or 0/0, P 3/3, M 1-4 / 1-4. Some species of the type form Palorchestes like P. azael reached a weight of 790 to 1410 kg, possibly also up to 2060 kg. The older Propalorchestes , however, weighed only around 155 kg. The anatomy of the limbs suggests that the animals could stand up on their hind legs to acquire food - possibly supported by a strong tail - in order to grasp leaves and twigs with their front feet.
Systematics
The family Palorchestidae only contains the two genera Palorchestes Owen, 1873a and Propalorchestes Murray, 1986. The genus Palorchestes with its five species Palorchestes azael Owen, 1873a, Palorchestes painei Woodburne, 1967a, Palorchestes parvus De Palchestes , 1895 , 1995 and Palorchestes anulus Black, 1997b existed from the early Miocene to the Pleistocene . The genus Propalorchestes with its two species Propalorchestes novaculacephalus Murray, 1986 and Propalorchestes ponticulus Murray, 1990b, however, existed from the late Oligocene to the middle Miocene. The family Palorchestidae together with the family Diprotodontidae form the superfamily Diprotodontoidea .
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 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hazel L. Richards, Rod T. Wells, Alistair R. Evans, Erich MG Fitzgerald and Justin W. Adams: The extraordinary osteology and functional morphology of the limbs in Palorchestidae, a family of strange extinct marsupial giants. PLoS ONE 14 (9), 2019, p. E0221824, doi: 10.1371 / journal.pone.0221824