Wallabia bicolor
The swamp wallaby is a small macropod marsupial of eastern Australia. This wallaby is also commonly known as the black wallaby, with other names including black-tailed wallaby, fern wallaby, black pademelon, stinker, and black stinker on account of its characteristic swampy odour.

Toby Hudson · 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
- swamp wallabyPBDB
- Sits inside
- WallabiaPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Macropodidae
- Life habit
- saltatorialPBDB, for Wallabia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia
Time the record covers
At least 2.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 2.58 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
9 occurrences of Wallabia bicolor 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
9 occurrences- Pliocene22%
- Pleistocene56%
- Holocene22%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Wallabia bicolor has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 8 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Wallabia bicolor and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Wallabia bicolor and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
198 taxa- Macropus (Macropus) giganteus6 sites
- Pseudomys6 sites
- Aves5 sites
- Isoodon obesulus5 sites
- Macropus5 sites
- Pseudocheirus peregrinus5 sites
- Rattus5 sites
- Thylacoleo carnifex5 sites
- Vombatus ursinus5 sites
- Bettongia4 sites
- Bettongia penicillata4 sites
- Cercartetus nanus4 sites
- Dasyurus viverrinus4 sites
- Macropus rufogriseus4 sites
- Mastacomys4 sites
- Tachyglossus aculeatus4 sites
- Thylacinus cynocephalus4 sites
- Trichosurus vulpecula4 sites
- Aepyprymnus rufescens3 sites
- Agamidae3 sites
- Bettongia lesueur3 sites
- Dasyurus maculatus3 sites
- Hydromys3 sites
- Notomys3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 9 sites for Wallabia bicolor, 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
8 references- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia2
- Late Holocene hunting economies in coastal southeastern Australia: Insights from the archaeological fauna of Curracurrang 1 Rockshelter, Royal National Park1
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia II1
- Mesozoic to early Quaternary mammal faunas of Victoria, South-East Australia1
- Systematics and evolution of the sthenurine kangaroos1
- The upper fossil fauna of the Henschke fossil cave, Naracoorte, South Australia1
- Magnetic Polarity Stratigraphy and Mammalian Fauna of the Late Pliocene (Early Matuyama) Section at Batesford (Victoria), Australia1
- Tropical Rainforests of North Queensland: Their Conservation Significance1
Each of the 9 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 Wallabia bicolor
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Toby Hudson
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Wallabia bicolor 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 itWallabia through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Desmarest 1804)