Bettongia

Searched as Bettongia penicillina. The Paleobiology Database treats Bettongia as the accepted name.

Bettongs, species of the genus Bettongia, are potoroine marsupials once common in Australia. They are important ecosystem engineers displaced during the colonisation of the continent, and are vulnerable to threatening factors such as altered fire regimes, land clearing, pastoralism and introduced predatory species such as the fox and cat.

Bettongia

JJ Harrison ( https://www.jjharrison.com.au/ ) · 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
bettongPBDB
Sits inside
PotoroidaePBDB
Diet
herbivore, insectivorePBDB, for Potoroidae
Life habit
saltatorialPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia

Time the record covers

At most 3.6 million years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 3.6 Mya and 0 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Pliocene — about 0 of 1 occurrencePliocenePleistocene — about 1 of 1 occurrencePleistoceneHolocene — about 0 of 1 occurrence3.7–3.6 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences3.6–3.4 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences3.4–3.3 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences3.3–3.1 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences3.1–3.0 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences3.0–2.9 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences2.9–2.7 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences2.7–2.6 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences2.6–2.5 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences2.5–2.3 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences2.3–2.2 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences2.2–2.0 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences2.0–1.9 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.9–1.8 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.8–1.6 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.6–1.5 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.5–1.4 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.4–1.2 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.2–1.1 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences1.1–957 ka Mya — about 0.0 occurrences957 ka–820 ka Mya — about 0.0 occurrences820 ka–683 ka Mya — about 0.0 occurrences683 ka–547 ka Mya — about 0.0 occurrences547 ka–410 ka Mya — about 0.0 occurrences410 ka–273 ka Mya — about 0.0 occurrences273 ka–137 ka Mya — about 0.0 occurrences137 ka–0 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences4.1 Mya0 Mya

1 occurrence of Bettongia 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

1 occurrences

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.

Bettongia and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Bettongia and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

334 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 30 sites for Bettongia, 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

1 reference

Each of the 1 occurrence 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 content1

Picture of Bettongia

Credit
JJ Harrison ( https://www.jjharrison.com.au/ )
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Bettongia 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 itPotoroidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gray 1837