Diprotodon optatum

Creator:Dmitry Bogdanov · CC BY 3.0 · 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- Sits inside
- DiprotodonPBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Marsupialia
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Marsupialia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia
Time the record covers
At least 645 thousand years on record.
The record covers at least 774 ka to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 0 Mya.
26 occurrences of Diprotodon optatum on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
26 occurrences- Pliocene6%
- Pleistocene94%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Diprotodon optatum has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 25 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Diprotodon optatum and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Diprotodon optatum and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
186 taxa- Thylacoleo carnifex8 sites
- Macropus7 sites
- Dromaius novaehollandiae5 sites
- Macropus (Macropus) giganteus5 sites
- Procoptodon rapha5 sites
- Protemnodon5 sites
- Varanus5 sites
- Bettongia lesueur4 sites
- Crocodyloidea4 sites
- Isoodon obesulus4 sites
- Macropus goliah4 sites
- Protemnodon brehus4 sites
- Sarcophilus laniarius4 sites
- Trichosurus vulpecula4 sites
- Bettongia3 sites
- Bettongia penicillata3 sites
- Dasyurus viverrinus3 sites
- Lagorchestes3 sites
- Macropus rufogriseus3 sites
- Mastacomys3 sites
- Perameles bougainville3 sites
- Protemnodon anak3 sites
- Pseudomys3 sites
- Simosthenurus occidentalis3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 23 sites for Diprotodon optatum, 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
18 references- Taxonomy and palaeobiology of the largest-ever marsupial, Diprotodon Owen, 1838 (Diprotodontidae, Marsupialia)6
- Some Queensland fossil vertebrates3
- Extinction of eastern Sahul megafauna coincides with sustained environmental deterioration2
- A diverse Pleistocene marsupial trackway assemblage from the Victorian volcanic plains, Australia1
- Investigating human and megafauna co-occurrence in Australian prehistory: Mode and causality in fossil accumulations at Cuddie Springs1
- Diprotodontid footprints from the Pliocene of Central Australia1
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia II1
- Early Pleistocene mammals from the Nelson Baylocal fauna, Portland, Victoria, Australia1
- Mesozoic to early Quaternary mammal faunas of Victoria, South-East Australia1
- Age constraints on the Duck Ponds and Limeburner's Point mammalian faunas based on magnetic polarity stratigraphy in the Geelong area (Victoria), Australia1
- Magnetic polarity stratigraphy of Pliocene and Pleistocene fossil vertebrate localities in southeastern Australia1
- The Wyandotte Local Fauna: A New, Dated, Pleistocene Vertebrate Fauna from Northern Queensland1
Each of the 26 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. 6 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 Diprotodon optatum
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Creator:Dmitry Bogdanov
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- NHM_Imaging
- 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itDiprotodon through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Owen 1838