Palorchestidae

Uncredited · via Wikidata/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
- VombatoideaPBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Marsupialia
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Marsupialia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia
Time the record covers
At least 22 million years on record.
The record covers at least 23.04 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 27.3 Mya to 11.7 ka.
37 occurrences of Palorchestidae 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
37 occurrences- Oligocene11%
- Miocene16%
- Pliocene14%
- Pleistocene58%
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.
Found in
7 formations
- Whaler's Bluff Formation2
- Nelson Bay Formation2
- Carl Creek Limestone Formation2
- Grange Burn Formation1
- Etadunna Formation1
- Wyandotte Formation1
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The named rock units Palorchestidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 27 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Palorchestidae and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Palorchestidae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
271 taxa- Palorchestes azael10 sites
- Palorchestes8 sites
- Macropus7 sites
- Protemnodon7 sites
- Diprotodontidae6 sites
- Protemnodon anak6 sites
- Thylacoleo carnifex6 sites
- Varanus6 sites
- Vombatidae6 sites
- Diprotodon optatum5 sites
- Protemnodon brehus5 sites
- Sthenurus5 sites
- Ektopodontidae4 sites
- Macropodidae4 sites
- Macropus (Macropus) giganteus4 sites
- Ngapakaldia bonythoni4 sites
- Palorchestes parvus4 sites
- Pseudocheiridae4 sites
- Rodentia4 sites
- Sarcophilus laniarius4 sites
- Simosthenurus occidentalis4 sites
- Antechinus3 sites
- Baringa nelsonensis3 sites
- Bettongia3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 31 sites for Palorchestidae, 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
23 references- The extraordinary osteology and functional morphology of the limbs in Palorchestidae, a family of strange extinct marsupial giants5
- Ngapakaldia bonythoni (Marsupialia, Diprotodontidae): new material from Riversleigh, northwestern Queensland, and a reassessment of the genus Bematherium4
- Mesozoic to early Quaternary mammal faunas of Victoria, South-East Australia4
- Early Pleistocene mammals from the Nelson Baylocal fauna, Portland, Victoria, Australia2
- The Encore Local Fauna, a late Miocene assemblage from Riversleigh, northwestern Queensland2
- A review of the Plio-Pleistocene crocodilian genus Pallimnarchus2
- The fossil vertebrate fauna from Pleistocene deposits at Cement Mills, Gore, southern Queensland2
- Extinction of eastern Sahul megafauna coincides with sustained environmental deterioration1
- Man and megafauna in Tasmania: closing the gap1
- Investigating human and megafauna co-occurrence in Australian prehistory: Mode and causality in fossil accumulations at Cuddie Springs1
- Pliocene marine mammals from the Whalers Bluff Formation of Portland, Victoria, Australia1
- A review of the Tertiary fossil Cetacea (Mammalia) localities in Australia1
Each of the 37 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. 11 further references are not listed. 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 Palorchestidae
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Palorchestidae 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itVombatoidea through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Tate 1948