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Macropus titan Owen, 1838

Colossal kangaroo

 

 

Taxonomy & Nomenclature

Synonym/s: Macropus giganteus titan Owen, 1838; Macropus magister De Vis, 1894:120; Macropus faunus de Vis, 1895

 

Macropus magister was synonymised with M. titan by (Anderson, 1929).

 

Conservation Status

Extinct

Last record: Late Pleistocene

 

Distribution

Australia

 

Biology & Ecology

 

 

Hypodigm

Holotype: BM M10777

Type locality: "from "Large Cavern", coIl. by Mitchell, 1830" (Dawson, 1985:66)

 

Other specimens:

F18665 (Dawson, 1985:66)

UCMP 45164 (Dawson, 1985:66)

QMF44645 ("dentary")

QM F4230 (Bartholomai, 1975)

SAM P17532 (Helgen et al., 2006:303)

SAM P18297 (Helgen et al., 2006:303)

SAM P17525 (Helgen et al., 2006:303)

SAM P17270 (Helgen et al., 2006:303)

SAM P17270 (Helgen et al., 2006:303)

SAM P17312 (Helgen et al., 2006:303)

FUCN 4005 (Helgen et al., 2006:303)

NMV P194574 (Helgen et al., 2006:303)

NMV P39112 (Helgen et al., 2006:303)

NMV P39113 (Helgen et al., 2006:303)

NMV P42533 (Helgen et al., 2006:303)

NMV P39101 (Helgen et al., 2006:303)

NMV P42533 (Helgen et al., 2006:303)

 

Media

 

 

References

Original scientific description:

Owen, Richard. (1838). Fossil mammal remains from Wellington Valley, Australia. Marsupialia. Pp. 359-369, Appendix to Mitchell, T. L. Three expeditions into the interior of eastern Australia, with descriptions of the recently explored region of Australia Felix, and of the present colony of New South Wales. (T. & W. Boone: London). Volume 2.

 

Other references:

Anderson, C. (1929). Palaeontological notes no. 1. Macropus titan Owen and Thylacoleo carnifex Owen. Records of the Australian Museum 17(1): 35-49, plates xvii-xviii.

Archer, Michael "Mike". (1978). Quaternary vertebrate faunas from the Texas Caves of southeastern Queensland. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 19(1): 61-109.

Armand, L., Ride, W. D. L. and Taylor, G. (2000). The stratigraphy and palaeontology of Teapot Creek, MacLaughlin River, NSW. Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales 122: 101-121.

Barrett, Charles. (1929). Cave hunting and what we found. The Australian Museum Magazine 3(12): 414-419.

Bartholomai, A. (1971). Morphology and variation of the cheek teeth in Macropus giganteus Shaw and Macropus agilis (Gould). Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 16: 1-18.

Bartholomai, A. (1975). The genus Macropus Shaw (Marsupialia: Macropodidae) in the upper Cainozoic deposits of Queensland. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 17(2): 195-235.

Bartholomai, Alan. (1977). The fossil vertebrate fauna from Pleistocene deposits at Cement Mills, Gore, Southeastern Queensland. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 18(1): 41-51.

Cosgrove, Richard, Field, Judith, Garvey, Jillian, Brenner-Coltrain, Joan, Goede, Albert, Charles, Bethan, Wroe, Steve, Pike-Tay, Anne, Grün, Rainer, Aubert, Maxime, Lees, Wendy and O'Connell, James. (2010). Overdone overkill – the archaeological perspective on Tasmanian megafaunal extinctions. Journal of Archaeological Science 37: 2486-2503.

Davis, A. C. (1996). Quaternary mammal faunas and their statigraphy in the Monaro region, southeastern Australia. PhD Thesis. Australian National University.

Dawson, Lyndall. (1985). Marsupial fossils from Wellington Caves, New South Wales; the historic and scientific significance of the collections in the Australia Museum, Sydney. Records of the Australian Museum 37(2): 55-69.

Dawson, L. and Augee, M. L. (1997). The late Quaternary sediments and fossil cave vertebrate fauna from Cathedral Cave, Wellington Caves, New South Wales. Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. 117: 51-78.

Dawson, L. and Flannery T. (1985). Taxonomic and phylogenetic status of living and fossil kangaroos and wallabies of the genus Macropus Shaw (Macropodidae: Marsupialia), with a new subgeneric name for the larger wallabies. Australian Journal of Zoology 33: 473-498.

De Vis, Charles W. (1895). A review of the fossil jaws of the Macropodidae in the
Queensland Museum. Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S. W. (2) 10: 75-133, pIs 14-18. [compared the new species with M. titan]

Dortch, Joe et al. (2016). The timing and cause of megafauna mass deaths at Lancefield Swamp, south-eastern Australia. Quaternary Science Reviews 145: 161-182. [Abstract]

Easton, L. C. (2006). Pleistocene Grey Kangaroos from the Fossil Chamber of Victoria Fossil Cave, Naracoorte, South Australia. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia 130(1): 17-28.

Errey, K. and Flannery, T. F. (1978). The neglected megafaunal sites of the Colongulac region, western Victoria. The Artefact 3: 101-106.

Flannery, Timothy F. (1981). A review of the genus Macropus (Marsupialia: Macropodidae), the living grey kangaroos and their fossil allies. M.Sc. Thesis, Monash University.

Flannery, Timothy F. and Gott, B. (1984). The Spring Creek locality, southwestern Victoria, a late surviving megafaunal assemblage. Australian Zoologist 21: 385-422.

Gill, Edmund D. and Banks, M. R. (1956). Cainozoic history of Mowbray Swamp and other areas of northwestern Tasmania. Ibid. 6: 1-42.

Glauert, L. G. (1926 "1925"). A list of Western Australian fossils. Supplement no.1. West. Aust. Geol. Surv. Bull. 88: 36-71.

Goede, A. and Bada, J. (1985). Electron spin resonance dating of Quaternary bone material from Tasmanian caves: a comparison with ages determined by aspartic acid racemization and C14. Australian Journal of Earth Sciences 32: 155-162.

Goede. A. and Murray, P. F. (1977). Pleistocene man in south central Tasmania: evidence from a cave site in the Florentine valley. Mankind 11: 2-10.

Goede, A. and Murray, P. F. (1979). Late Pleistocene bone deposits from a cave in the Florentine Valley, Tasmania. Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania 113: 39-52.

Helgen, Kristofer M., Wells, Rod T., Kear, Benjamin P., Gerdtz, Wayne R. and Flannery, Timothy F. (2006). Ecological and evolutionary significance of sizes of giant extinct kangaroos. Australian Journal of Zoology 54(4): 293-303. [body weight estimate]

Hocknull, Scott A. (2005). Ecological succession during the late Cainozoic of central eastern Queensland: extinction of a diverse rainforest community. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 51(1): 39-122. [automatic download]

Hocknull, Scott A. et al. (2020). Extinction of eastern Sahul megafauna coincides with sustained environmental deterioration. Nature Communications 11: 2250. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-15785-w

Lundelius, Ernest L. Jr. and Turnbull, W. D. (1989). The mammalian fauna of Madura Cave, Western Australia. Part VII: Macropodidae: Sthenurinae, Macropodinae, with a review of the marsupial portion of the fauna. Fieldiana, Geology, new series 17: 1-71.

Mahoney, J. A. and Ride, W. D. L. (1975). Index to the genera and species of fossil Mammalia described from Australia and New Guinea between 1838 and 1968. Western Australian Museum Special Publication 6: 1-250.

Marcus, L. F. (1976). The Bingara Fauna: a Pleistocene vertebrate fauna from Murchison County, New South Wales, Australia. University of California Publications in Geological Sciences 114: 1-145.

Marshall, Larry G. (1974). Late Pleistocene mammals from the "Keilor Cranium Site", southern Victoria, Australia. Memoirs of the National Museum of Victoria 35: 63-86.

Marshall, L. G. and Corruccini, R. S. (1978). Variability, evolutionary rates, and allometry in dwarfing lineages. Paleobiology 4: 101-119. [Abstract]

McNamara, Ken and Murray, Peter. (2010). Prehistoric Mammals of Western Australia. Welshpool, WA: Western Australian Museum. 107 pp.

Mitchell, T. L. (1838). Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, with descriptions of the recently explored region of Australia Felix, and of the present colony of New South Wales. Vol. 1. London: T. & W. Boone, 343 pp.

Molnar, R. E. and Kurz, C. (1997). The distribution of Pleistocene vertebrates on the eastern Darling Downs, based on the Queensland Museum collections. Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales 117: 107-133.

Murray, P. F., and A. Goede. (1977). Pleistocene vertebrate remains from a cave near Montagu, N.W. Tasmania. Records of the Queen Victoria Museum 60: 1-30.

Murray, P. F., Goede, A. and Bada, J. (1980). Pleistocene human occupation at Beginners Luck Cave, Florentine Valley, Tasmania. Archaeology and Physical Anthropology in Oceania 15: 142-152.

O'Driscoll, Adrian Muirgheas, Janis, Christine and Rayfield, Emily. (2020). Macropus titan, pushing the limits of hopping? Gear ratios and resistance to load in Macropodoidea. Poster presentation (abstract), p. 51. In: Progressive Palaeontology 2020 Abstract Booklet.

Piper, Katarzyna J. (2016). The Macropodidae (Marsupialia) of the early Pleistocene Nelson Bay Local Fauna, Victoria, Australia. Memoirs of Museum Victoria 74: 233-253.

Pledge, Neville S. (1990). The Upper Fossil Fauna of the Henschke Fossil Cave, Naracoorte, South Australia. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum (Proceedings of the De Vis Symposium) 28(1): 247-262.

Price, Gilbert J., Louys, Julien, Smith Garry K. and Cramb Jonathan. (2019). Shifting faunal baselines through the Quaternary revealed by cave fossils of eastern Australia. PeerJ 6: e6099.

Price, Gilbert J. and Sobbe, I. H. (2005). Pleistocene palaeoecology and environmental change on the Darling Downs, southeastern Queensland, Australia. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 51(1): 171-201. [subfossil remains from Darling Downs, Queensland]

Reed, Elizabeth H. and Bourne, Steven J. (2000). Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the south east region of South Australia. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia 124(2): 61-90.

Roberts, Richard G, Flannery, Timothy F., Ayliffe, Linda, Yoshida, Hiroyuki, Olley, Jon M., Prideaux, Gavin J., Laslett, Geoff M., Baynes, Alexander, Smith, M. A., Jones, Rhys I. and Smith, Barton L. (2001). New ages for the last Australian megafauna: Continent-wide extinction about 46,000 years ago. Science 292(5523): 1888-1892. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1060264

Tedford, R. H. (1967). The fossil Macropodidae from Lake Menindee, New South Wales. University of California Publications in Geological Sciences 64: 1-156.

Tedford, R. H. (1994). Lake Callabonna: 'Veritable necropolis of gigantic extinct marsupials and birds'. Abstracts of the fourth conference on Australian vertebrate evolution, palaeontology and systematics, Adelaide, 19-21 April, 1993. Records of the South Australian Museum 1994. [Abstract]

Travouillon, Kenny J., Jackson, Stephen, Beck, Robin M. D., Louys, Julien, Cramb, Jonathan, Gillespie, Anna, Black, Karen, Hand, Suzanne, Archer, Michael, Kear, Benjamin, Hocknull, Scott, Phillips, Matthew, McDowell, Matthew, Fitzgerald, Erich M. G., Brewer, Phillipa and Price, Gilbert J. (2024). Checklist of the Fossil Mammal Species of Australia and New Guinea.  Available from: https://www.australasianpalaeontologists.com/national-fossil-species-lists [Accessed 24 November 2024]

Van Huet, Sanja. (1994a). The taphonomy of a late Quaternary site, Lancefield swamp, Victoria. Unpublished M.Sc. thesis, Department of Earth Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria.

Van Huet, Sanja. (1994b). The Lancefield megafauna site, Victoria. Abstracts of the fourth conference on Australian vertebrate evolution, palaeontology and systematics, Adelaide, 19-21 April, 1993. Records of the South Australian Museum 27: 229. [Abstract]

Van Huet, Sanja. (1999). The taphonomy of the Lancefield swamp megafaunal accumulation, Lancefield, Victoria. In: Baynes, Alexander and Long, John A. (eds.). Papers in vertebrate palaeontology. Records of the Western Australian Museum Supplement 57: 331-340.

Waterhouse, George Robert. (1846). A Natural History of the Mammalia. Volume 1, Containing the Order Marsupiata or Pouched Animals. London: Hippolyte Baillière. 553 pp + 20 pls.

Wells, Rod T., Moriarty, K. and Williams, D. L. G. (1984). The fossil vertebrate deposits of Victoria Fossil Cave Naracoorte: an introduction to the geology and fauna. The Australian Zoologist 21(4): 305-333.

White, J. Peter and Flannery, Tim. (1995). Late Pleistocene fauna at Spring Creek, Victoria: A re-evaluation. Australian Archaeology 40: 13-17. [link to pdf copy at bottom of the page]

Willis, P. M. A. and Molnar, Ralph E. (1997). Identification of large reptilian teeth from Plio–Pleistocene deposits of Australia. Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales 130(3-4): 79-92.

Young, William G., Stevens, Michael and Jupp, Robert. (1990). Tooth wear and enamel structure in the mandibular incisors of six species of kangaroo (Marsupialia: Macropodinae). Memoirs of the Queensland Museum (Proceedings of the De Vis symposium) 28(1): 337-347.

 

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