Potoroidae
Potoroidae is a family of marsupials, small Australian animals known as bettongs, potoroos, and rat-kangaroos. All are rabbit-sized, brown, jumping marsupials and resemble a large rodent or a very small wallaby.

arthur_chapman · CC BY 2.0 · 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
- DiprotodontiaPBDB
- Diet
- herbivore, insectivorePBDB
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Marsupialia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia
Time the record covers
At least 23 million years on record.
The record covers at least 23.04 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 27.3 Mya to 0 Mya.
98 occurrences of Potoroidae 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
98 occurrences- Oligocene2%
- Miocene3%
- Pliocene5%
- Pleistocene83%
- Holocene8%
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
4 formations
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The named rock units Potoroidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 92 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Potoroidae and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Potoroidae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
494 taxa- Bettongia19 sites
- Pseudomys19 sites
- Isoodon obesulus17 sites
- Rattus17 sites
- Trichosurus vulpecula17 sites
- Bettongia lesueur16 sites
- Dasyurus viverrinus16 sites
- Antechinus flavipes15 sites
- Macropus15 sites
- Mastacomys15 sites
- Pseudocheirus peregrinus15 sites
- Macropus (Macropus) giganteus14 sites
- Thylacinus cynocephalus14 sites
- Bettongia penicillata13 sites
- Sminthopsis murina13 sites
- Cercartetus nanus12 sites
- Petaurus breviceps12 sites
- Thylacoleo carnifex12 sites
- Notomys11 sites
- Perameles11 sites
- Perameles gunnii11 sites
- Potorous platyops11 sites
- Potorous tridactylus11 sites
- Sminthopsis crassicaudata11 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 44 sites for Potoroidae, 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
37 references- Late Quaternary Small Mammal Faunas of the Naracoorte Caves World Heritage Area12
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia9
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia II7
- The upper fossil fauna of the Henschke fossil cave, Naracoorte, South Australia7
- The mammalian fauna of Madura Cave, western Australia; Part VI, Macropodidae: Potoroinae6
- Small fossil vertebrates from Victoria Cave, Naracoorte, South Australia. I. Potoroinae (Macropodidae), Petauridae and Burramyidae (Marsupialia)4
- Vertebrate remains from the Nullarbor caves, Western Australia4
- Investigating human and megafauna co-occurrence in Australian prehistory: Mode and causality in fossil accumulations at Cuddie Springs3
- Systematics and evolution of the sthenurine kangaroos3
- Marsupial fossils from Wellington Caves, New South Wales; the historic and scientific significance of the collections in the Australian Museum, Sydney3
- The fossil vertebrate fauna from Pleistocene deposits at Cement Mills, Gore, southern Queensland3
- Late Pleistocene Faunal Remains from Seton Rock Shelter, Kangaroo Island, South Australia3
Each of the 98 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. 25 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 Potoroidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- arthur_chapman
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Potoroidae 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, “Potoroidae”
- 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 itDiprotodontia through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gray 1821