Euryzygoma
Euryzygoma is an extinct genus of marsupial which inhabited humid eucalyptus forests in Queensland and New South Wales during the Pliocene of Australia. Euryzygoma is believed to have weighed around 500 kg, and differed from other diprotodontids in having unusual, flaring cheekbones that may have been used either for storing food or for sexual display. Euryzygoma is thought to be the ancestral genus from which Diprotodon evolved.

Nobu Tamura · 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
- DiprotodontidaePBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Marsupialia
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Marsupialia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia
Time the record covers
At least 1 million years on record.
The record covers at least 3.6 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 11.7 ka.
4 occurrences of Euryzygoma on record, most of them in the Pliocene. 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
4 occurrences- Pliocene50%
- Pleistocene50%
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 Euryzygoma 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.
Euryzygoma and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Euryzygoma and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
52 taxa- Crocodyloidea2 sites
- Phascolonus lemleyi2 sites
- Protemnodon2 sites
- aff. Tandanus tandanus1 site
- Agamidae1 site
- Anhinga1 site
- Bohra paulae1 site
- Cereopsis1 site
- Chelodina (Chelodina)1 site
- Crocodylia1 site
- Crustacea1 site
- Cygnus atratus1 site
- Dendrocygna arcuata1 site
- Diprotodon optatum1 site
- Diprotodontidae1 site
- Egretta picata1 site
- Elapidae1 site
- Elseya uberrima1 site
- Emydura1 site
- Ephippiorhynchus asiaticus1 site
- Euowenia1 site
- Koobor1 site
- Latagallina naracoortensis1 site
- Macropodidae1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Euryzygoma, 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
4 references- Pliocene paleoenvironments of southeastern Queensland, Australia inferred from stable isotopes of marsupial tooth enamel1
- Results of the Ray E. Lemley expeditions; Part 1, the Allingham Formation and a new Pliocene vertebrate fauna from northern Queensland1
- Palaeontological notes1
- Some Queensland fossil vertebrates1
Each of the 4 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 Euryzygoma
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Nobu Tamura
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Euryzygoma 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Euryzygoma”
- 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 itDiprotodontidae through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Longman 1921