Hulitherium

Hulitherium
Temporal range: Pleistocene
↓
Restoration of Hulitherium
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Infraclass: Marsupialia
Order: Diprotodontia
Suborder: Vombatiformes
Family: †Diprotodontidae
Subfamily: †Zygomaturinae
Genus: †Hulitherium
Flannery & Plane, 1986
Species: H. tomasetti
Binomial name
Hulitherium tomasetti
Flannery & Plane, 1986

Hulitherium tomasetti (meaning "Huli beast", after the Huli people)[1] is an extinct zygomaturine marsupial from New Guinea during the Pleistocene. The species name honours Bernard Tomasetti who brought the fossils to the attention of experts.[1][2]

Fossils

Hulitherium was described on the basis of a nearly complete skull, several detached teeth, a fragment of lower jaw, atlas and cervical vertebrae, almost complete humerus and fragmentary bones of the hind limb. The skeleton suggests that the limbs were highly mobile relative to the other diprotodontids and that it was a browser.[1]

Biology

Hulitherium lived in montane rain forests and may have fed on bamboo. perhaps a marsupial analogue of the giant panda. It was one of New Guinea's largest mammals with the height of 1 m (3 ft) and was close to 2 m (6 ft) long. And the estimated weight of 75-200 kilograms. Flannery and Plane (1986) suggested that because little had changed since the Late Pleistocene, humans may have been the major factor that led to its extinction.[1][3][4]

Other relatives

Murray (1992) concluded that Hulitherium is most closely related to the New Guinean Maokopia, and that these two together are most closely related to Kolopsis rotundus also from new Guinea. Black and Mackness(1999) suggested that the Hulitherium clade is more closely related to the clade comprising Zygomaturus plus another undescribed genus from Australia, than it is to Kolopsis.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Long, J.; Archer, M.; Flannery, T.; Hand, S. (2002). Prehistoric Mammals of Australia and New Guinea: One Hundred Million Years of Evolution. The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 91. ISBN 0-8018-7223-5. OCLC 49860159.
  2. ↑ Flannery, T.F. (1986). "A new late Pleistocene diprotodontid (Marsupialia) from Pureni, Southern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea" (PDF). BMR Journal of Australian Geology & Geophysic. 10: 65–76.
  3. ↑ Richard T. Corlett: Megafaunal extinctions and their consequences in the tropical Indo-Pacific, Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore
  4. ↑ Haberle, Simon G. (2007). "Prehistoric human impact on rainforest biodiversity in highland New Guinea". Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society B. 362 (1478): 219–228. PMC 2311426 Freely accessible.

Sources

See also


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