Macropus sp. nov. 'fat-tail'
Taxonomy & Nomenclature
Conservation Status
This undescribed species is purely hypothetical, based upon a motif of a macropod with a distinctively enlarged tail, thus far only recorded from the Pilbara region (Brown, 1983; Mulvaney, 2009, 2015). Dingle (2015) quotes archaeologist Ken Mulvaney talking about a particular spotted example:
"Unlike most kangaroos and wallabies this has a bulge, a bit like the fat-tailed sheep. It appears there was possibly a fat-tailed macropod that lived in the Pilbara sometime before 10,000 years ago. It actually has what appear to be spots as a decoration… It is unlikely to have been an artistic design embellishment ... It is likely that what we have is an animal that went extinct before the sea levels came in, before the Holocene period of Australia."
Several authors have investigated rock art images of fat-tailed macropods from the Pilbara (Brown, 1983, 2018; Mulvaney, 2009, 2013, 2015; Stewart 2016; He et al., 2025). While Brown (1983) initially postulated that this motif may relate to an extinct species (fide Mulvaney, 2015:236), and which was positively discussed in much more detail by (Mulvaney, 2009, 2015:236-245), Brown (2018) hypothesised that it represented a "creative and culturally informed expression demonstrating a special food source" (note: quote from He et al., 2025 not Brown, 2018). He et al. (2025) report the discovery of over 130 new examples from Eastern Guruma country in the inner Pilbara, and conduct extensive research into the motif which fails to support the idea of an extinct taxon.
Distribution & Habitat
Pilbara region, Western Australia, Australia
Biology & Ecology
Hypodigm
Media
References
Brown, S. H. (1983). Incised rock engravings and fat-tailed macropod motifs, Pilbara, Western Australia, pp. 185-198. In: Smith, Moya V. (ed.). Archaeology at ANZAAS 1983. Perth: Western Australian Museum. vi + 376 pp.
Brown, S. H. (2018). Tales of a fat-tailed macropod, pp. 241-257. In: Langley, Michelle C., Litster, Mirani, Wright, Duncan and May, Sally K. (eds.). Archaeology of Portable Art: Southeast Asian, Pacific, and Australian Perspectives. Routledge.
Dingle, Sarah. (2015). Burrup Peninsula rock art shows extinct megafauna and Tasmanian tigers in WA. Background Briefing blog post, RN ABC, Monday 22 June 2015 4:44PM.
He, Shiqin, Gilani, Syed Zulqarnain, Morrison, Patrick, Hughes, Michael and McDonald, Jo. (2025). Pilbara Fat-Tailed Macropods: Using Multivariate and Morphometric Analyses to Explore Spatial and Stylistic Variability. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 32: 12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-024-09670-9
Mulvaney, Ken J. (2009). Dating the Dreaming: extinct fauna in the petroglyphs of the Pilbara region, Western Australia. Archaeology in Oceania 44(1): S40-S48.
Mulvaney, Ken J. (2013). Iconic imagery: Pleistocene rock art development across northern Australia. Quaternary International 285: 99-110.
Mulvaney, Ken J. (2015). Murujuga Marni: Indigenous Rock Art of the Macropod Hunters & Mollusc Harvesters (CRAR+M Monograph Series). Crawley, WA: UWA Publishing. xxviii + 399 pp. [chapter 6 under the heading, 'Fat-tail Macropods - a Consideration', pp. 236-245]
Stewart, R. (2016). An approach with style: A stylistic analysis of macropod rock art on Murujuga (Burrup Peninsula), Western Australia. Unpublished BA (Honours) thesis, CRAR+M and Archaeology
Department, The University of Western Australia.