Sminthopsis crassicaudata
The fat-tailed dunnart is a species of mouse-like marsupial of the Dasyuridae, the family that includes the little red kaluta, quolls, and the Tasmanian devil.

(c) Connor Margetts, some rights reserved (CC BY) · CC BY 4.0 · 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- Also called
- fat-tailed dunnartPBDB
- Sits inside
- SminthopsisPBDB
- Diet
- insectivore, carnivorePBDB, for Dasyuridae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Sminthopsis
- 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 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
14 occurrences of Sminthopsis crassicaudata 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
14 occurrences- Pleistocene99%
- Holoceneunder 1%
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.
Sminthopsis crassicaudata and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Sminthopsis crassicaudata and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
181 taxa- Antechinus flavipes10 sites
- Dasyurus viverrinus10 sites
- Perameles gunnii10 sites
- Petaurus breviceps10 sites
- Sminthopsis murina10 sites
- Cercartetus nanus9 sites
- Mastacomys9 sites
- Notomys9 sites
- Pseudocheirus peregrinus9 sites
- Pseudomys9 sites
- Bettongia8 sites
- Bettongia lesueur8 sites
- Isoodon obesulus8 sites
- Phascogale tapoatafa8 sites
- Cercartetus lepidus7 sites
- Conilurus7 sites
- Potorous platyops7 sites
- Rattus7 sites
- Trichosurus vulpecula7 sites
- Acrobates pygmaeus6 sites
- Macropus6 sites
- Perameles bougainville6 sites
- Egernia5 sites
- Hydromys5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 14 sites for Sminthopsis crassicaudata, 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
9 references- Late Quaternary Small Mammal Faunas of the Naracoorte Caves World Heritage Area3
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia II2
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia2
- Vertebrate remains from the Nullarbor caves, Western Australia2
- Palaeontological excavation and taphonomic investigation of the late Pleistocene fossil deposit in Grant Hall, Victoria Fossil Cave, Naracoorte, South Australia1
- Mesozoic to early Quaternary mammal faunas of Victoria, South-East Australia1
- The late Quaternary sediments and fossil vertebrate fauna from Cathedral Cave, Wellington Caves, New South Wales1
- The mammalian fauna of Madura Cave, Western Australia, Part II1
- Small fossil vertebrates from Victoria Cave, Naracoorte, South Australia. II. Peramelidae, Thylacinidae and Dasyuridae (Marsupialia)1
Each of the 14 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 Sminthopsis crassicaudata
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- (c) Connor Margetts, some rights reserved (CC BY)
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Sminthopsis crassicaudata 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 itSminthopsis through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Gould 1844)