Dasyurus

Uncredited · via Wikidata/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
- quollPBDB
- Sits inside
- DasyuriniPBDB
- Diet
- insectivore, carnivorePBDB, for Dasyuridae
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia
Time the record covers
At least 3.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 3.6 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
52 occurrences of Dasyurus 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
52 occurrences- Pliocene10%
- Pleistocene83%
- Holocene7%
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.
Found in
4 formations
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The named rock units Dasyurus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 47 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Dasyurus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Dasyurus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
380 taxa- Pseudomys18 sites
- Bettongia17 sites
- Isoodon obesulus17 sites
- Pseudocheirus peregrinus17 sites
- Rattus17 sites
- Antechinus flavipes16 sites
- Macropus15 sites
- Trichosurus vulpecula15 sites
- Sminthopsis murina14 sites
- Mastacomys13 sites
- Petaurus breviceps13 sites
- Thylacinus cynocephalus13 sites
- Bettongia lesueur12 sites
- Cercartetus nanus12 sites
- Macropus (Macropus) giganteus12 sites
- Perameles12 sites
- Perameles gunnii12 sites
- Phascogale tapoatafa11 sites
- Potorous tridactylus11 sites
- Sminthopsis crassicaudata11 sites
- Thylacoleo carnifex11 sites
- Bettongia penicillata10 sites
- Conilurus10 sites
- Notomys10 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 38 sites for Dasyurus, 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
28 references- Late Quaternary Small Mammal Faunas of the Naracoorte Caves World Heritage Area5
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia II5
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia3
- The late Quaternary sediments and fossil vertebrate fauna from Cathedral Cave, Wellington Caves, New South Wales3
- The Munich collection of Wellington Cave fossil marsupials3
- Review of the dasyurid (Marsupialia) fossil record, integration of data bearing on phylogenetic interpretation, and suprageneric classification3
- Systematics and evolution of the sthenurine kangaroos2
- Tropical Rainforests of North Queensland: Their Conservation Significance2
- Marsupial fossils from Wellington Caves, New South Wales; the historic and scientific significance of the collections in the Australian Museum, Sydney2
- Warendja wakefieldi, a new genus of wombat (Maruspialia , Vombatidae) from Pleistocene sediments in McEacherns Cave, western Victoria2
- Late Pleistocene Faunal Remains from Seton Rock Shelter, Kangaroo Island, South Australia2
- Fossiliferous deposits at Lake Tandou, New South Wales, Australia2
Each of the 52 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. 16 further references are 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 content2

Picture of Dasyurus
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itDasyurini through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Geoffroy 1796