Dasyurus maculatus
The tiger quoll, also known as the spotted-tailed quoll, spotted quoll, spotted-tailed dasyure, or tiger cat, is a carnivorous marsupial of the quoll genus Dasyurus native to Australia. With males and females weighing around 3.5 and 1.8 kg, respectively, it is the world's second-largest extant carnivorous marsupial, behind the Tasmanian devil. Two subspecies are recognised; the nominate is found in wet forests of southeastern Australia and Tasmania, and a northern subspecies, D. m. gracilis, is found in a small area of northern Queensland and is endangered.

pimelea · CC BY 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- Also called
- tiger quollPBDB
- Sits inside
- DasyurusPBDB
- Diet
- insectivore, carnivorePBDB, for Dasyuridae
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Dasyurus
- 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 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
10 occurrences of Dasyurus maculatus 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
10 occurrences- Pleistocene80%
- Holocene20%
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.
Dasyurus maculatus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Dasyurus maculatus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
225 taxa- Isoodon obesulus8 sites
- Antechinus flavipes7 sites
- Pseudomys7 sites
- Bettongia penicillata6 sites
- Pseudocheirus peregrinus6 sites
- Trichosurus vulpecula6 sites
- Bettongia5 sites
- Bettongia lesueur5 sites
- Dasyurus viverrinus5 sites
- Perameles bougainville5 sites
- Perameles gunnii5 sites
- Petaurus breviceps5 sites
- Potorous tridactylus5 sites
- Rattus5 sites
- Sminthopsis murina5 sites
- Cercartetus lepidus4 sites
- Cercartetus nanus4 sites
- Macropus (Macropus) fuliginosus4 sites
- Mastacomys4 sites
- Notomys4 sites
- Potorous platyops4 sites
- Sminthopsis crassicaudata4 sites
- Thylacoleo carnifex4 sites
- Acrobates pygmaeus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 10 sites for Dasyurus maculatus, 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
9 references- Late Quaternary Small Mammal Faunas of the Naracoorte Caves World Heritage Area2
- Late Holocene hunting economies in coastal southeastern Australia: Insights from the archaeological fauna of Curracurrang 1 Rockshelter, Royal National Park1
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia II1
- Systematics and evolution of the sthenurine kangaroos1
- Tropical Rainforests of North Queensland: Their Conservation Significance1
- Marsupial fossils from Wellington Caves, New South Wales; the historic and scientific significance of the collections in the Australian Museum, Sydney1
- Warendja wakefieldi, a new genus of wombat (Maruspialia , Vombatidae) from Pleistocene sediments in McEacherns Cave, western Victoria1
- Late Pleistocene Faunal Remains from Seton Rock Shelter, Kangaroo Island, South Australia1
- Small fossil vertebrates from Victoria Cave, Naracoorte, South Australia. II. Peramelidae, Thylacinidae and Dasyuridae (Marsupialia)1
Each of the 10 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. 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 maculatus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- pimelea
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- wannabewyvern
- Licence
- CC Attribution-NonCommercial
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Tiger quoll”
- 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 itDasyurus through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Kerr 1792)