Antechinus stuartii
The brown antechinus, also known as Stuart's antechinus and Macleay's marsupial mouse, is a species of small carnivorous marsupial of the family Dasyuridae. The males die after their first breeding season, and the species holds the world record for being the world's smallest semelparous mammal.

Glen Fergus · CC BY-SA 2.5 · 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
- Brown 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 117 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 129 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 774 ka to 0 Mya.
3 occurrences of Antechinus stuartii 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
3 occurrences- Pleistocene67%
- Holocene33%
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 stuartii and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Antechinus stuartii and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
111 taxa- Antechinus flavipes3 sites
- Petaurus breviceps3 sites
- Pseudocheirus peregrinus3 sites
- Sminthopsis murina3 sites
- Antechinus swainsonii2 sites
- Bettongia2 sites
- Bettongia penicillata2 sites
- Cercartetus nanus2 sites
- Dasyurus maculatus2 sites
- Dasyurus viverrinus2 sites
- Isoodon obesulus2 sites
- Perameles nasuta2 sites
- Petauroides volans2 sites
- Pseudomys2 sites
- Rattus2 sites
- Acrobates pygmaeus1 site
- Aepyprymnus rufescens1 site
- Amphibolurus barbatus1 site
- Burramys parvus1 site
- Calidris1 site
- Caretta caretta1 site
- Carphodactylus1 site
- Cercartetus caudatus1 site
- Cercartetus lepidus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Antechinus stuartii, 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
3 references- 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
- Small fossil vertebrates from Victoria Cave, Naracoorte, South Australia. II. Peramelidae, Thylacinidae and Dasyuridae (Marsupialia)1
Each of the 3 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Antechinus stuartii
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Glen Fergus
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Antechinus stuartii stuartii · FMNH:Mammals:129556
Smithsonian Open Access was 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. Macleay 1841