Marsupialiformes

Benjamin A. Sheppard. · Public Domain · 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
- MetatheriaPBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Metatheria
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Theria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia
Time the record covers
At least 110 million years on record.
The record covers at least 110.1 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 119.57 Mya to 0 Mya.
4,744 occurrences of Marsupialiformes 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
4,744 occurrences- Early Cretaceousunder 1%
- Late Cretaceous15%
- Paleocene2%
- Eocene17%
- Oligocene8%
- Miocene17%
- Pliocene7%
- Pleistocene30%
- Holocene3%
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
298 formations
- Santa Cruz Formation258
- Hell Creek Formation · Montana Group229
- Sarmiento Formation154
- Lance Formation95
- Bridger Formation57
- Friars Formation · La Jolla Group53
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The named rock units Marsupialiformes has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 274 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 2,041 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Marsupialiformes and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Marsupialiformes and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
1,463 taxa- Didelphodon vorax61 sites
- Meniscoessus robustus57 sites
- Cimolodon nitidus48 sites
- Mesodma thompsoni40 sites
- Trionychidae39 sites
- Scapherpeton tectum38 sites
- Mesodma36 sites
- Lepisosteus occidentalis35 sites
- Myledaphus bipartitus35 sites
- Theropoda35 sites
- Protolambda hatcheri33 sites
- Champsosaurus32 sites
- Pediomys elegans31 sites
- Hadrosauridae30 sites
- Mesodma formosa30 sites
- Brachychampsa montana29 sites
- Paronychodon29 sites
- Gypsonictops hypoconus28 sites
- Protolambda florencae28 sites
- Anura27 sites
- Habrosaurus dilatus27 sites
- Baenidae26 sites
- Borealosuchus sternbergii26 sites
- Cimolomys gracilis26 sites
The Paleobiology Database records at least 940 sites for Marsupialiformes, and this reads 240 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
875 references- Systematics and evolution of the sthenurine kangaroos389
- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals244
- Mesozoic to early Quaternary mammal faunas of Victoria, South-East Australia97
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia85
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia II77
- Late Quaternary Small Mammal Faunas of the Naracoorte Caves World Heritage Area74
- Review of the Hathlyacyninae, an extinct subfamily of South American "dog-like" marsupials64
- Fossil mammals from the type Lance Formation, Wyoming. Part II. Marsupialia58
- The Bug Creek problem and the Cretaceous-Tertiary transition at McGuire Creek, Montana48
- Marsupial fossils from Wellington Caves, New South Wales; the historic and scientific significance of the collections in the Australian Museum, Sydney48
- Systematics of the South American marsupial family Microbiotheriidae44
- Taxonomy and palaeobiology of the largest-ever marsupial, Diprotodon Owen, 1838 (Diprotodontidae, Marsupialia)41
Each of the 4,744 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. 863 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 content1

Picture of Marsupialiformes
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Benjamin A. Sheppard.
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Marsupialiformes 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itMetatheria through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Vullo and Gheerbrant 2009