Protemnodon anak (Owen, 1859)
Pleistocene Ice-age kangaroo, Giant wallaby
Taxonomy & Nomenclature
Synonym/s: Macropus anak Owen, 1859 (original combination); Halmaturus anak (Owen, 1859); Protemnodon og Owen, 1874
Owen (1874) implicitly designated P. anak as the type species of Protemnodon (see Kerr et al., 2024:10).
Conservation Status
Extinct
Last record: Late Pleistocene
Distribution
Australia
Anatomy & Morphology
It weighed an estimated 100kg (Johnson & Prideaux, 2004:557) or 131kg (Johnson, 2006:18) or a mean 131 ± 15.8 (n=4, range 122–153kg) (Helgen et al., 2006).
Biology & Ecology
It was a browser (Johnson, 2006:18).
Hypodigm
QMF44650 ("skull")
QMF44658 ("dentary")
F18904/9 (Dawson, 1985:66)
NMV P39101 (Helgen et al., 2006:303)
NMV P159917 (Helgen et al., 2006:303)
FUCN 400111 (Helgen et al., 2006:303)
SAM P27272 (Helgen et al., 2006:303)
Media
References
Original scientific description:
Owen, Richard. (1859). On a collection of Australian fossils in the museum of the natural history society of Worchester; with descriptions of the lower jaw and teeth of the Nototherium inerme and Nototherium mitchelli, Owen; demonstrating the identity of the latter species with Zygomaturus of Macleay. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 15: 176-186.
Other references:
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Bartholomai, A. (1973). The genus Protemnodon Owen (Marsupialia; Macropodidae) in the upper Cainozoic deposits of Queensland. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 16(3): 309-363.
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.
den Boer, W. (2018). Evolutionary Progression of the Iconic Australasian Kangaroos, Rat-Kangaroos, and their Fossil Relatives (Marsupialia: Macropodiformes). Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Science and Technology 1624. 105 pp. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.
Buckley, Michael, Cosgrove, Richard, Garvey, Jillian and Prideaux, Gavin J. (2017). Identifying remains of extinct kangaroos in Late Pleistocene deposits using collagen fingerprinting. Journal of Quaternary Science 32(5): 653-660.
Cascini, Manuela et al. (2018). Reconstructing the Evolution of Giant Extinct Kangaroos: Comparing the Utility of DNA, Morphology, and Total Evidence. Systematic Biology. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syy080 [Abstract]
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.
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. (1980). Macropus mundjabus, a new kangaroo (Marsupialia: Macropodidae) of uncertain age from Victoria, Australia. Australian Mammalogy 3: 35-51.
Flannery, Timothy F. (1982). Hindlimb structure and evolution in the kangaroos (Marsupialia: Macropodidae), pp. 507-524. In: Rich, Patricia-Vickers and Thompson, E. M. (eds.). The Fossil Vertebrate Record of Australasia. Melbourne: Monash University.
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Jones, Billie, Janis, Christine and Rayfield, Emily. (2020). Limb proportions indicate Protemnodon’s locomotion was divergent from modern large macropodines. Poster presentation (abstract), p. 46. In: Progressive Palaeontology 2020 Abstract Booklet.
Jones, Billie et al. (2022). Distal Humeral Morphology Indicates Locomotory Divergence in Extinct Giant Kangaroos. Journal of Mammalian Evolution 29: 27-41. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10914-021-09576-3
Kerr, Isaac A. R., Camens, Aaron B., van Zoelen, Jacob D., Worthy, Trevor H. and Prideaux, Gavin J. (2024). Systematics and palaeobiology of kangaroos of the late Cenozoic genus Protemnodon (Marsupialia, Macropodidae). Megataxa 11(1): 1-261. https://doi.org/10.11646/megataxa.11.1.1
Llamas, Bastien et al. (2014). Late Pleistocene Australian marsupial DNA clarifies the affinities of extinct megafaunal kangaroos and wallabies. Molecular Biology and Evolution 32: 574-584.
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