Notoryctidae is a family of mammals, allying several extant and fossil species of Australia.
The group appear to have diverged from other
marsupial
Marsupials are any members of the mammalian infraclass Marsupialia. All extant marsupials are endemic to Australasia, Wallacea and the Americas. A distinctive characteristic common to most of these species is that the young are carried in a ...
s at an early stage and are highly specialised to foraging through loose sand; the unusual features have seen the unique family placed in the taxonomic order Notoryctemorphia Aplin & Archer, 1987. The eyes and external ears are absent in the modern species, the nose is shielded and mouth reduced in size, and they use pairs of well developed claws to move beneath the sand.
The Australian animals resemble a species known as moles, a burrow building mammal found in other continents, and were collectively referred to as 'marsupial moles'. The regional names for the well known animals, established before their published descriptions, are used to refer to the species.
The extant notoryctid species are subterranean, and are extremely well adapted to moving through sand plains and dunes, these are the two species of genus ''
Notoryctes
Marsupial moles, the Notoryctidae , are highly specialized marsupial mammals, known from two species found at the Australian interior.
* ''Notoryctes typhlops'' (southern marsupial mole, known as the ''itjaritjari'' by the Pitjantjatjara and Yan ...
'' Stirling, 1891.
The animals are known as
itjaritjari, species ''
N. typhlops'', and
kakarratul, a name for species ''
N. caurinus''.
A fossil species in a new genus was published as ''
Naraboryctes
''Naraboryctes philcreaseri'' is a fossil species of marsupial found at early Miocene deposits of Boodjamulla National Park of Riversleigh area, northwestern Queensland, Australia.
Taxonomy
It was first named by Michael Archer, Robin Beck, M ...
'' Archer et al. 2010. A new diagnosis for Notoryctidae was also provided in the species first description, as a consequence of the discovery a fossil species of the family.
The
dental formula
Dentition pertains to the development of teeth and their arrangement in the mouth. In particular, it is the characteristic arrangement, kind, and number of teeth in a given species at a given age. That is, the number, type, and morpho-physiolog ...
is I1-5/1-3, C1/1, P1-3/1-3, M1-4/1-4.
References
{{Authority control
Taxa named by James Douglas Ogilby
Mammal families