Thylacoleo
| Thylacoleo | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Skull of Thylacoleo carnifex |
||||||||||||
| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Miocene to Pleistocene | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the subfamily | ||||||||||||
| Thylacoleoninae | ||||||||||||
| Gill , 1872 | ||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the genus | ||||||||||||
| Thylacoleo | ||||||||||||
| Owen in Gerwais , 1852 | ||||||||||||
Thylacoleo is a genus of marsupials from the late Miocene to late Pleistocene.
features
Thylacoleo , the "bag lion", had strong extremities, a strong spine, front paws with sharp claws and particularly long thumb claws. The first toe of the foot was opposable , the third premolar was transformed into a fang , while the molars were greatly reduced, the first upper molar being used to sharpen the P3 fangs. Thylacoleo was a successful predator who, like recent leopards , brought his prey up into trees for consumption and, like those killed by cutting off the air supply with a bite in the throat.
species
There are three known types. Thylacoleo carnifex OWEN, 1858 reached the size of a recent leopard or female lion with a live weight of up to 150 kg and was thus the largest species of the genus. It also possessed the longest P3 fangs and was widespread across much of the Australian continent in the Pleistocene . Thylacoleo hilli PLEDGE, 1977 was the smallest and oldest species of the genus with the shortest P3 fangs. It lived from the late Miocene to the Pliocene as part of the Curramulka local fauna in South Australia and the Bow local fauna in New South Wales . Thylacoleo crassidentatus BARTHOLOMAI, 1962 was between the two other species of the genus in terms of time and body size and size of the P3 fangs. He lived in the Pliocene and was widespread over large parts of Eastern 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 .
- PV Rich, GF van Tets: Kadimakara, Extinct Vertebrates of Australia . Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1990
