Ektopodon

Ektopodon is an extinct genus of marsupial, and is the type genus of the family Ektopodontidae which occurred in forested environments in South Australia, Queensland and Victoria. The last species of this group went extinct in the early Pleistocene. Its body mass was estimated around 1300 grams. Scientists believe that ektopodontids were highly specialised seed-eating possums.

Ektopodon

Peter Schouten · 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
EktopodontidaePBDB
Diet
omnivorePBDB, for Marsupialia
Life habit
scansorialPBDB, for Marsupialia
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia

Time the record covers

At least 17 million years on record.

The record covers at least 23.04 Mya to 5.333 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 27.3 Mya to 3.6 Mya.

Oligocene — about 2 of 5 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 0 of 5 occurrencesPliocene — about 3 of 5 occurrencesPliocene28–27 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences27–26 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences26–25 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences25–25 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences25–24 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences24–23 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences5.6–4.7 Mya — about 1 occurrence4.7–3.9 Mya — about 1 occurrence3.9–3.1 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences23.04 Mya5.333 Mya27.8 Mya3.1 Mya

5 occurrences of Ektopodon on record. 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

5 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.

Found in

2 formations

Etadunna — 28.76°S, 138.40°ENamba — 31.13°S, 140.10°E

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The named rock units Ektopodon has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Found in the same rock

6 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Ektopodon, 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

2 references

Each of the 5 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 content1

Picture of Ektopodon

Credit
Peter Schouten
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Ektopodon was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itEktopodontidae through timeThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Stirton et al. 1967