Macropus
Searched as Macropus giganteus titan. The Paleobiology Database treats Macropus as the accepted name.
Macropus, from the Ancient Greek words μακρός (makrós), meaning "long", and πούς (pous), meaning "foot", is a marsupial genus in the family Macropodidae. It has two extant species of large terrestrial kangaroos. Thirteen known extinct species are recognised. The type species is the eastern grey kangaroo.

fir0002 flagstaffotos [at] gmail.com Canon 20D + Canon 400mm f/5.6 L · GFDL 1.2 · 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
- MacropodinaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Macropodidae
- Life habit
- saltatorialPBDB
- 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.
4 occurrences of Macropus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
4 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.
Macropus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Macropus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
486 taxa- Sthenurus andersoni22 sites
- Protemnodon20 sites
- Thylacoleo carnifex19 sites
- Thylacinus cynocephalus18 sites
- Pseudomys17 sites
- Simosthenurus occidentalis16 sites
- Bettongia15 sites
- Rattus15 sites
- Protemnodon brehus14 sites
- Varanus14 sites
- Dasyurus viverrinus13 sites
- Isoodon obesulus13 sites
- Sthenurus13 sites
- Trichosurus vulpecula13 sites
- Diprotodon optatum12 sites
- Mastacomys12 sites
- Perameles12 sites
- Pseudocheirus peregrinus12 sites
- Antechinus flavipes11 sites
- Bettongia lesueur11 sites
- Bettongia penicillata11 sites
- Dasyurus11 sites
- Procoptodon browneorum11 sites
- Procoptodon gilli11 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 107 sites for Macropus, 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
3 references- Marsupial fossils from Wellington Caves, New South Wales; the historic and scientific significance of the collections in the Australian Museum, Sydney2
- Last glacial megafaunal death assemblage and early human occupation at Lake Menindee, southeastern Australia1
- The Spring Creek locality, southwestern Victoria, a late surviving megafaunal assemblage1
Each of the 4 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 Macropus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- fir0002 flagstaffotos [at] gmail.com Canon 20D + Canon 400mm f/5.6 L
- Licence
- GFDL 1.2
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- Wesleyan University
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Macropus”
- 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 itMacropodinae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Shaw 1790