Thylacoleo hilli
Thylacoleo is an extinct genus of carnivorous marsupials that lived in Australia from the late Pliocene to the Late Pleistocene, often known as marsupial lions. They were the largest and last members of the family Thylacoleonidae, occupying the position of apex predator within Australian ecosystems. The largest and last species, Thylacoleo carnifex, had an estimated average weight of 101 to 130 kg, approaching the weight of a modern lioness.

Roderick T. Wells ,Aaron B. Camens · CC BY 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
- ThylacoleoPBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Marsupialia
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Marsupialia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Thylacoleo hilli 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
2 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
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.
Thylacoleo hilli and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Thylacoleo hilli and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
59 taxa- Baringa nelsonensis2 sites
- Simosthenurus occidentalis2 sites
- Antechinus1 site
- Baringa1 site
- Chelidae1 site
- Corracheirus curramulkensis1 site
- Cundokoala yorkensis1 site
- Darcius duggani1 site
- Diprotodon optatum1 site
- Diprotodontidae1 site
- Elapidae1 site
- Garrdimalga mcnamarai1 site
- Glaucodon1 site
- Ilbandornis1 site
- Lasiorhinus1 site
- Macropus (Macropus) giganteus1 site
- Macropus atlas1 site
- Macropus goliah1 site
- Mastacomys1 site
- Meiolania1 site
- Metasthenurus newtonae1 site
- Neobatrachus1 site
- Palorchestes painei1 site
- Palorchestes parvus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Thylacoleo hilli, 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
2 references- Early Pleistocene mammals from the Nelson Baylocal fauna, Portland, Victoria, Australia1
- The Curramulka local fauna: a new Late Tertiary fossil assemblage from Yorke Peninsula, South Australia1
Each of the 2 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Thylacoleo hilli
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Roderick T. Wells ,Aaron B. Camens
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Thylacoleo hilli was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were 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, “Thylacoleo”
- 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 itThylacoleo through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Pledge 1977