Bettongia lesueur

The boodie, also known as the burrowing bettong or Lesueur's rat-kangaroo, is a small, furry, rat-like mammal native to Australia. Once common throughout the continent, it is now restricted to a few coastal islands. A member of the rat-kangaroo family (Potoroidae), it lives in burrows and is active at night when it forages for fungi, roots, and other plant matter. It is about the size of a rabbit and, like most marsupials, carries its young in a pouch.

Bettongia lesueur

Stephen Michael Barnett · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
BettongiaPBDB
Diet
herbivore, insectivorePBDB, for Potoroidae
Life habit
saltatorialPBDB, for Bettongia
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia

Time the record covers

At most 3.6 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 3.6 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pliocene — about 0 of 16 occurrencesPliocenePleistocene — about 14 of 16 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 2 of 16 occurrences3.7–3.6 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences3.6–3.4 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences3.4–3.3 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences3.3–3.1 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences3.1–3.0 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences3.0–2.9 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences2.9–2.7 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences2.7–2.6 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences2.6–2.5 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences2.5–2.3 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences2.3–2.2 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences2.2–2.0 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences2.0–1.9 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences1.9–1.8 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences1.8–1.6 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences1.6–1.5 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences1.5–1.4 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences1.4–1.2 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences1.2–1.1 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences1.1–957 ka Mya — about 0.4 occurrences957 ka–820 ka Mya — about 0.4 occurrences820 ka–683 ka Mya — about 0.8 occurrences683 ka–547 ka Mya — about 0.9 occurrences547 ka–410 ka Mya — about 0.9 occurrences410 ka–273 ka Mya — about 0.9 occurrences273 ka–137 ka Mya — about 0.9 occurrences137 ka–0 Mya — about 6 occurrences4.1 Mya0 Mya

16 occurrences of Bettongia lesueur on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

16 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Bettongia lesueur and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Bettongia lesueur and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

241 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 16 sites for Bettongia lesueur, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

12 references

Each of the 16 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Bettongia lesueur

Credit
Stephen Michael Barnett
Licence
CC BY 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Bettongia lesueur was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itBettongia through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Quoy and Gaimard 1824)