Antechinus flavipes
The yellow-footed antechinus, also known as the mardo, is a shrew-like marsupial found in Australia. One notable feature of the species is its sexual behavior. The male yellow-footed antechinus engages in such frenzied mating that its immune system becomes compromised, resulting in stress-related death before it is one year old.

Benjamint444 · 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
- Yellow-footed antechinusPBDB
- Sits inside
- AntechinusPBDB
- Diet
- insectivore, carnivorePBDB, for Dasyuridae
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Antechinus
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia
Time the record covers
At least 762 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 774 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 3.6 Mya to 0 Mya.
19 occurrences of Antechinus flavipes 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
19 occurrences- Pliocene1%
- Pleistocene93%
- Holocene6%
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.
Antechinus flavipes and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Antechinus flavipes and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
270 taxa- Sminthopsis murina14 sites
- Pseudocheirus peregrinus13 sites
- Pseudomys13 sites
- Isoodon obesulus12 sites
- Mastacomys12 sites
- Petaurus breviceps12 sites
- Dasyurus viverrinus11 sites
- Rattus11 sites
- Trichosurus vulpecula11 sites
- Cercartetus nanus10 sites
- Perameles gunnii10 sites
- Phascogale tapoatafa10 sites
- Sminthopsis crassicaudata10 sites
- Bettongia lesueur9 sites
- Cercartetus lepidus9 sites
- Conilurus8 sites
- Notomys8 sites
- Potorous platyops8 sites
- Sminthopsis8 sites
- Acrobates pygmaeus7 sites
- Bettongia7 sites
- Dasyurus maculatus7 sites
- Hydromys7 sites
- Perameles bougainville7 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 17 sites for Antechinus flavipes, 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
13 references- Late Quaternary Small Mammal Faunas of the Naracoorte Caves World Heritage Area3
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia II2
- Palaeontological excavation and taphonomic investigation of the late Pleistocene fossil deposit in Grant Hall, Victoria Fossil Cave, Naracoorte, South Australia2
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia2
- Marsupial fossils from Wellington Caves, New South Wales; the historic and scientific significance of the collections in the Australian Museum, Sydney2
- The late Quaternary sediments and fossil vertebrate fauna from Cathedral Cave, Wellington Caves, New South Wales1
- Analysis of a late Quaternary deposit and small mammal fauna from Nettle Cave, Jenolan, New South Wales1
- Tropical Rainforests of North Queensland: Their Conservation Significance1
- Late Quaternary mammal remains, spanning about 30,000 years from excavations in Devil's Lair, Western Australia1
- Late Pleistocene Faunal Remains from Seton Rock Shelter, Kangaroo Island, South Australia1
- Prehistoric mammal faunas from two small caves in the extreme southwest of Western Australia1
- Small fossil vertebrates from Victoria Cave, Naracoorte, South Australia. II. Peramelidae, Thylacinidae and Dasyuridae (Marsupialia)1
Each of the 19 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. 1 further reference is not listed. 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 Antechinus flavipes
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Benjamint444
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Antechinus flavipes 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 itAntechinus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Waterhouse 1838