Perameles eremiana Spencer, 1897:9
Desert bandicoot, Orange-backed bandicoot, mulgaruquirra (Alice Springs), iwurra (Charlotte Waters), walilya (Warburton region)
Taxonomy & Nomenclature
Conservation Status
Extinct
Last record: 1931 (Flannery et al., 1990); 1943 (Fisher & Blomberg, 2012; Lee et al., 2017; Gordon, 2023); 1960's (Johnson, 2006:169); between 1964 and 1969 (according to local aborigines)
IUCN RedList status: Extinct
First collected in the Northern Territory in 1896 by F. J. Gillen and P. M. Byrne. Gordon (2008) has suggested that Perameles eremiana is synonymous with P. bougainville, disagreeing with Freeman's (1967) delineation of the two species. The pintupi people of central Australia claimed to have eaten them as recently as 1964/69 (Burbidge et al., 1988).
Distribution
Northern Territory (southern), South Australia (northern) & Western Australia (southeastern), Australia
Type locality: "Burt Plain, N of Alice Springs, N.T., central Australia (as 40 miles NE of Charlotte Waters, N.T.)" (Mahoney & Ride, 1988:41)
Anatomy & Morphology
Body mass: ~200gm (Johnson, 2006:169)
Biology & Ecology
"Ecology: terrestrial, nocturnal, hummock grassland; sand ridge desert, shallow nesting depression."
(Mahoney & Ride, 1988:41)
Hypodigm
Holotype: NMV C5864 (male; in spirits) (Mahoney & Ride, 1988:41)
Media
References
Original scientific description:
Spencer, Baldwin. (1897). Description of two new species of marsupials from Central Australia. Proc. R. Soc. Vict. (new series) 9: 5-11.
Other references:
Abbott, I. 2002. Origin and spread of the cat, Felis catus, on mainland Australia, with a discussion on the magnitude of its early impact on native fauna. Wildlife Research 29: 51-74.
Abbott, I. 2008. The spread of the cat, Felis catus, in Australia: re-examination of the current conceptual model with additional information. Conservation Science Western Australia 7: 1-17.
Aitken, P. (1979). The status of endangered Australian wombats, bandicoots and the marsupial mole, pp. ?-?. In: Tyler, Michael J. (ed.). The Status of Endangered Australasian Wildlife. Adelaide: Royal Zoological Society of South Australia.
Anonymous. (1977). Terrestrial native mammals of Western Australia. S.W.A.N.S. 7(1): 7-8. [a mere listing as being native to WA]
Anonymous. (1980). Mammals of the Warburton region. S.W.A.N.S. 10(1): 22-23.
Bolton, B.L. and Latz, P.K. 1978. The western hare-wallaby Lagorchestes hirsutus (Gould) (Macropodidae) in the Tanami Desert. Australian Wildlife Research 5: 285-293.
Burbidge, A. A and Fuller, P. J. (1979). Mammals of the Warburton region, Western Australia. Rec. West. Aust. Mus. 8(1): 57-73.
Burbidge, Andrew A. and Fuller, Phillip J. (1984). Finding out about Desert Mammals. S.W.A.N.S. 14(1): 9-13.
Andrew A. Burbidge; Ken A. Johnson; Phillip J. Fuller, and R. I. Southgate. (1988). Aboriginal Knowledge of the Mammals of the Central Deserts of Australia. Aust. Wildl. Res. 15: 9-39.
Burbidge, A., Johnson, K. & Aplin, K. (2008). Perameles eremiana. In: IUCN 2011. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2011.1. (http://www.iucnredlist.org). Downloaded on 22 September 2011.
Burbidge, Andrew A. and McKenzie, Norman L. (1989). Patterns in the modern decline of western Australia's vertebrate fauna: Causes and conservation implications. Biological Conservation 50(1-4): 143-198. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0006-3207(89)90009-8
Burbidge, A.A. & Woinarski, J. 2016. Perameles eremiana. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2016: e.T16570A21965953. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-3.RLTS.T16570A21965953.en. Accessed on 02 July 2022.
Dickman, C.R. 1996. Overview of the impacts of feral cats on Australian native fauna. Australian Nature Conservation Agency, Canberra.
Dixon, J. M. (1970). Catalogue of mammal types (Class Mammalia) in the National Museum of Victoria. Mem. Natl. Mus. Vict. 31: 105-114.
Finlayson, Hedley Herbert. (1961). On central Australian mammals. Part IV. The distribution and status of central Australian species. Records of the South Australian Museum 14: 141-191.
Fisher, Diana O. and Blomberg, Simon P. (2012). Inferring Extinction of Mammals from Sighting Records, Threats, and Biological Traits. Conservation Biology 26(1): 57-67. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2011.01797.x
Flannery, Timothy, Kendall, Paula and Wynn-Moylan, Karen. (1990). Australia's Vanishing Mammals: Endangered and Extinct Native Species. Sydney: Reader's Digest Press. 192 pp.
Freeman, L. (1967). Skull and tooth variations in the genus Perameles. Part I. Anatomical features. Rec. Aust. Mus. 27: 147-66.
Freudenthal, M. and Martín-Suárez, E. (2013). Estimating body mass of fossil rodents. Scripta Geologica 145: 1-130. [0.500 kg min. mass estimate]
Friedman, L. 1967. Skull and tooth variation in the genus Perameles. Part 1: Anatomical features. Records of the Australian Museum 27: 147-166.
Frith, H. J. (1979). Wildlife Conservation, revised edition. Angus & Robertson. xiv + 416 pp. [p. 298, p. 334 (species account)]
Glauert, Ludwig. (1933). The distribution of the marsupials in Western Australia. Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia 19: 17-32.
Goodwin, Harry A. and Goodwin, J. M. (1973). List of mammals which have become extinct or are possibly extinct since 1600. Int. Union Conserv. Nat. Occas. Pap. 8: 1-20.
Gordon, G. (1983). Desert Bandicoot Perameles eremiana. In: The Australian Museum complete Book of Australian Mammals. (Ed. R. Strahan.) pp. 102. Sydney, Australia: Angus and Robertson.
Gordon, G. (1995). Desert Bandicoot, Perameles eremiana, pp. 180-181. In: Strahan, Ronald (ed.). The Mammals of Australia. Chatswood, N.S.W.: Reed Books. 756 pp.
Gordon, G. (2008). Desert Bandicoot, Perameles eremiana, pp. 185-186. In: S. Van Dyck and R. Strahan (eds.). The Mammals of Australia. Third Edition. Reed New Holland, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Gordon, G. (2023). Desert Bandicoot, Perameles eremiana, pp. 182-184. In: Baker, Andrew M. and Gynther, Ian C. (eds.). Strahan’s Mammals of Australia (4th ed.). Wahroonga, NSW: Reed New Holland Publishers. 848 pp.
Gordon, G. and Hall, L. S. (1995). Tail fat storage in arid zone bandicoots. Australian Mammalogy 18: 87-90.
How, R. A., Cooper, N. K. and Bannister, J. L. (2001). Checklist of the mammals of Western Australia. Records of the Western Australian Museum Supplement No. 63: 91-98.
Iredale, Tom and Troughton, Ellis Le Geyt. (1934). A check-list of the mammals recorded from Australia. Mem. Aust. Mus. 6: i-xii, 1-122.
Jackson, Stephen and Groves, Colin. (2015). Taxonomy of Australian Mammals. Clayton South, Melbourne: CSIRO Publishing. 529 pp. [p. 88]
Johnson, Chris N. (2006). Australia's Mammal Extinctions: A 50 000 Year History. Port Melbourne, Victoria: Cambridge University Press. x + 278 pp. [pl. 27, p. 169]
Johnson, K.A., and Southgate, R.I. (1990). Present and former status of bandicoots in the Northern Territory. In Bandicoots and bilbies (eds J.H. Seebeck, P.R. Brown, R.L. Wallis and C.M. Kemper.) pp. 85-92. (Surrey Beatty & Sons, Sydney.)
Kinnear, J., Sumner, N.R. and Onus, M.L. 2002. The red fox in Australia—an exotic predator turned biocontrol agent. Biological Conservation 108: 335-359.
Lee, T. E., Fisher, D. O., Blomberg, S. P. and Wintle, B. A. (2017). Extinct or still out there? Disentangling influences on extinction and rediscovery helps to clarify the fate of species on the edge. Global Change Biology 23(2): 621-634. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13421
Low, Tim and Booth, Carol. (2023). GONE: Australian animals extinct since the 1960s. Invasive Species Council Inc.
Lundelius, Ernest L. Jr. (1957). Additions to knowledge of the ranges of Western Australian mammals. The Western Australian Naturalist 5(7): 173-182. [p. 179]
Lundelius, Ernest L. Jr. and Turnbull, W. D. (1981). The mammalian fauna of Madura Cave, Western Australia Part IV. Fieldiana Geology new ser., no. 6: 1-72. [p. 28]
Lyne, A. G. (1952). Notes on external characters of the pouch young of four species of bandicoots. Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. 122: 625-649.
Mahoney, J. A. and Ride, W. D. L. (1988). Peramelidae, pp. 36-42. In: Walton, D. W. (ed.). Zoological Catalogue of Australia. Volume 5. Mammalia. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. x + 273 pp. [p. 41]
Maxwell, S., Burbidge, A.A. and Morris, K. 1996. The 1996 Action Plan for Australian Marsupials and Monotremes. Australasian Marsupial and Monotreme Specialist Group, IUCN Species Survival Commission, Gland, Switzerland.
O’Connor, S., Veth, P. and Campbell, C. (1998). Serpent’s Glen Rockshelter: report of the first Pleistocene-aged occupation sequence from the Western Desert. Australian Archaeology 46: 12-22.
Parker, Shane A. (1973). An annotated checklist of the native land mammals of the Northern Territory. Records of the South Australian Museum 16(11): 1-57.
Pavey, Chris. (2006). "Perameles eremiana" (PDF). Department of Natural Resources, Environment and the Arts, Northern Territory Government. Accessed 8 May, 2011. (available online: http://www.nt.gov.au/nreta/wildlife/animals/threatened/pdf/mammals/desert_bandicoot_ex.pdf)
Ride, W. D. L. (1970). A Guide to the Native Mammals of Australia. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Tate, George Henry Hamilton. (1948). Results of the Archbold Expeditions. No. 60. Studies in the Peramelidae (Marsupialia). Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 92(6): 313-346, text figure 1, tables 1-10.
Thornback, Jane and Jenkins, Martin (compilers). (1982). The IUCN Mammal Red Data Book. Part 1: Threatened Mammalian Taxa of the Americas and the Australasian Zoogeographic Region (Excluding Cetacea). Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. 516 pp.
Travouillon, Keeny J., and Phillips, M. J. (2018). Total evidence analysis of the phylogenetic relationships of bandicoots and bilbies (Marsupialia: Peramelemorphia): reassessment of two species and description of a new species. Zootaxa 4378: 224-256.
Troughton, Ellis Le Geyt. (1941). Furred Animals of Australia. Sydney: Angus and Robertson Ltd.
Troughton, Ellis Le Geyt. (1965). Furred Animals of Australia (8th edition). Sydney: Angus & Robertson.
Turvey, Samuel T. (2009). Holocene mammal extinctions, pp. 41-61. In: Turvey, Samuel T. (ed.). Holocene Extinctions. Oxford, UK & New York, USA: Oxford University Press. xii + 352 pp.
Turvey, Samuel T. and Fritz, Susanne A. (2011). The ghosts of mammals past: biological and geographical patterns of global mammalian extinction across the Holocene. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 366(1577): 2564-2576. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2011.0020 [Supplementary Information]
Wakefield, N. A. (1963). Mammal remains from the Grampians, Victoria. Vict. Nat. 80: 130-133.
Westerman, M., Kear, B.P., Aplin, K., Meredith, R.W., Emerling, C. and Springer, M.S. 2012. Phylogenetic relationships of living and recently extinct bandicoots based on nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 62: 97-108.
Wilson, D. E. and Reeder, D. M. (2005). Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference. Third edition. Baltimore, Maryland: John Hopkins University Press.
Woinarski, John C. Z., Braby, M. F., Burbidge, A. A., Coates, D., Garnett, S. T., Fensham, R. J., Legge, S. M., McKenzie, N. L., Silcock, J L. and Murphy, B. P. (2019). Reading the black book: The number, timing, distribution and causes of listed extinctions in Australia. Biological Conservation 239: 108261. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2019.108261
Woinarski, John C. Z., Burbidge, Alan A. and Harrison, P. (2014). The Action Plan for Australian Mammals 2012. Melbourne: CSIRO Publishing.
Woinarski, J., Pavey, C., Kerrigan, R., Cowie, I. and Ward, S. 2007. Lost from our landscape: threatened species of the Northern Territory. NT Department of Natural Resources, Environment and the Arts, Darwin.
Wood Jones, Frederic. (1924). The Mammals of South Australia. Part II. The Bandicoots and the Herbivorous Marsupials (The syndactylous Didelphia). Adelaide: Government Printer. 2: 132-270. [8 August 1924] [p. 146 (key to south Australian Perameles (P. myosura, P. eremiana)), p. 150-151 (species account)]
https://extinctanimals.proboards.com/thread/6291/perameles-eremiana-desert-bandicoot