Crash bandicoot
Crash bandicoot is an extinct species of bandicoot that lived in Australia during the Middle Miocene. It is the only member of the genus Crash, which was named and described in 2014. The only known specimen was found at the Riversleigh World Heritage Area in north-western Queensland. It is one of the oldest known modern bandicoots.

Sauriazoicillus · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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- Sits inside
- CrashPBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Peramelidae
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Marsupialia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia
Time the record covers
At most 18 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 23.04 Mya and 5.333 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Crash bandicoot on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
2 occurrences- Miocene100%
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.
Crash bandicoot and its relatives
MioceneWhere Crash bandicoot and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
14 taxa- Archerops annectens1 site
- Australlus gagensis1 site
- Balbarinae1 site
- Bulungamayinae1 site
- Dromornithidae1 site
- Egernia gillespieae1 site
- Ganguroo bilamina1 site
- Hipposideridae1 site
- Liyamayi dayi1 site
- Malleodectes1 site
- Malleodectes mirabilis1 site
- Nimbadon lavarackorum1 site
- Serpentes1 site
- Weirdodectes napoleoni n. gen. n. sp.1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Crash bandicoot, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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 referenceEach of the 2 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 doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Crash bandicoot
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Sauriazoicillus
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- MatiasH290
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
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 itCrash through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Travouillon et al. 2014