Caloprymnus campestris
The desert rat-kangaroo, also called the buff-nosed rat-kangaroo, plains rat-kangaroo or oolacunta, is an extinct small hopping marsupial endemic to desert regions of Central Australia. It was first recorded in the early 1840s and described by John Gould in London in 1843, on the basis of three specimens sent to him by George Grey, the governor of South Australia at the time.

John Gould · Public Domain · 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
- CaloprymnusPBDB
- Diet
- herbivore, insectivorePBDB, for Potoroidae
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Marsupialia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Caloprymnus campestris 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
2 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
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.
Caloprymnus campestris and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Caloprymnus campestris and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
27 taxa- Antechinomys2 sites
- Bettongia2 sites
- Bettongia penicillata2 sites
- Leporillus conditor2 sites
- Bettongia lesueur1 site
- Dasycercus cristicauda1 site
- Dasyurus1 site
- Lagorchestes hirsutus1 site
- Lasiorhinus latifrons1 site
- Leggandina hermannsburgensis1 site
- Leporillus1 site
- Leporillus apicalis1 site
- Macropus1 site
- Macrotis lagotis1 site
- Metasthenurus newtonae1 site
- Perameles1 site
- Phascogale calura1 site
- Phascogalinae1 site
- Phascolarctos cinereus1 site
- Potorous1 site
- Potorus platyops1 site
- Pseudocheirus1 site
- Pseudomys1 site
- Sarcophilus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Caloprymnus campestris, 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
2 references- The mammalian fauna of Madura Cave, western Australia; Part VI, Macropodidae: Potoroinae1
- Vertebrate remains from the Nullarbor caves, Western Australia1
Each of the 2 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 content2
Picture of Caloprymnus campestris
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- John Gould
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Caloprymnus campestris · MAGNT:Mammal:U8048
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itCaloprymnus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Gould 1843)