Sthenurinae
Sthenurinae is a subfamily within the marsupial family Macropodidae, known as short-faced kangaroos or sthenurine kangaroos. No members of this subfamily are extant today, with all becoming extinct by the late Pleistocene. Procoptodon goliah, the largest macropodid known to have existed, was a sthenurine kangaroo, but sthenurines occurred in a range of sizes, with Procoptodon gilli being the smallest at the size of a small wallaby.
Ghedoghedo · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- short-faced kangarooPBDB
- Sits inside
- MacropodoideaPBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Marsupialia
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Marsupialia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia
Time the record covers
At least 23 million years on record.
The record covers at least 23.04 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 27.3 Mya to 0 Mya.
395 occurrences of Sthenurinae 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
395 occurrences- Oligocene1%
- Miocene1%
- Pliocene6%
- Pleistocene91%
- 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.
Found in
12 formations
- Katipiri Formation8
- Gambier Limestone Formation5
- Tirari Formation4
- Chinchilla Sand Formation3
- Moorna Formation3
- Waite Formation2
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The named rock units Sthenurinae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 364 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Sthenurinae and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Sthenurinae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
465 taxa- Simosthenurus occidentalis59 sites
- Sthenurus andersoni56 sites
- Procoptodon browneorum39 sites
- Procoptodon gilli31 sites
- Metasthenurus newtonae29 sites
- Macropus goliah27 sites
- Procoptodon rapha24 sites
- Simosthenurus maddocki23 sites
- Thylacoleo carnifex20 sites
- Diprotodon18 sites
- Macropus17 sites
- Macropus (Macropus) giganteus17 sites
- Simosthenurus pales17 sites
- Sthenurus17 sites
- Protemnodon16 sites
- Thylacinus cynocephalus16 sites
- Sthenurus tindalei15 sites
- Procoptodon pusio13 sites
- Pseudomys13 sites
- Bettongia12 sites
- Dasyurus viverrinus12 sites
- Macropus rufogriseus12 sites
- Mastacomys12 sites
- Isoodon obesulus11 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 206 sites for Sthenurinae, 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
38 references- Systematics and evolution of the sthenurine kangaroos316
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia II10
- Palaeontological excavation and taphonomic investigation of the late Pleistocene fossil deposit in Grant Hall, Victoria Fossil Cave, Naracoorte, South Australia6
- Marsupial fossils from Wellington Caves, New South Wales; the historic and scientific significance of the collections in the Australian Museum, Sydney6
- In Situ Taphonomic Investigation of Pleistocene Large Mammal Bone Deposits from The Ossuaries, Victoria Fossil Cave, Naracoorte, South Australia5
- The upper fossil fauna of the Henschke fossil cave, Naracoorte, South Australia5
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia4
- Magnetic polarity stratigraphy of Pliocene and Pleistocene fossil vertebrate localities in southeastern Australia3
- The Spring Creek locality, southwestern Victoria, a late surviving megafaunal assemblage3
- Fossil vertebrate faunas from the Lake Victoria region, SW. New South Wales, Australia3
- Mesozoic to early Quaternary mammal faunas of Victoria, South-East Australia2
- The Curramulka local fauna: a new Late Tertiary fossil assemblage from Yorke Peninsula, South Australia2
Each of the 395 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. 25 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 Sthenurinae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Ghedoghedo
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Sthenurinae was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Sthenurinae”
- 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 itMacropodoidea through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Glauert 1926