''Thylacinus potens'' ("powerful pouched dog") was the largest species of the family

Thylacinidae Thylacinidae is an extinct family of carnivorous, superficially dog-like marsupials from the order Dasyuromorphia. The only species to survive into modern times was the thylacine (''Thylacinus cynocephalus''), which became extinct in 1936. The ...

, originally known from a single poorly preserved fossil discovered by Michael O. Woodburne in 1967 in a

Late Miocene The Late Miocene (also known as Upper Miocene) is a sub-epoch of the Miocene Epoch made up of two stages. The Tortonian and Messinian stages comprise the Late Miocene sub-epoch, which lasted from 11.63 Ma (million years ago) to 5.333 Ma. The ...

locality near

Alice Springs Alice Springs ( aer, Mparntwe) is the third-largest town in the Northern Territory of Australia. Known as Stuart until 31 August 1933, the name Alice Springs was given by surveyor William Whitfield Mills after Alice, Lady Todd (''née'' Al ...

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory shares its borders with Western Au ...

. It preceded the most recent species of

thylacine The thylacine ( , or , also ) (''Thylacinus cynocephalus'') is an extinct carnivorous marsupial that was native to the Australian mainland and the islands of Tasmania and New Guinea. The last known live animal was captured in 1930 in Tas ...

by 4–6 million years, and was 5% bigger, was more robust and had a shorter, broader

skull The skull is a bone protective cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of four types of bone i.e., cranial bones, facial bones, ear ossicles and hyoid bone. However two parts are more prominent: the cranium and the mandible. In humans, t ...

. Its size is estimated to be similar to that of a

grey wolf The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly u ...

; the head and body together were around 5 feet long, and its teeth were less adapted for shearing compared to those of the now-extinct thylacine.

Taxonomy

The description of the species was published in 1967, the author Michael O. Woodburne distinguishing the new thylacine with the epithet ''potens'' for what he interpreted as a "powerful" predator. The evidence for the species emerged from geological and palaeontological research into the fossil fauna of the Alcoota site.

Description

A larger species of ''

Thylacinus ''Thylacinus'' is a genus of extinct carnivorous marsupials from the order Dasyuromorphia. The only recent member was the thylacine (''Thylacinus cynocephalus''), commonly also known as the Tasmanian tiger or Tasmanian wolf, which is believed to ...

'', greater in size and weight than the thylacine ('' Thylacinus cynocephalus'') and only exceeded by '' Thylacinus megiriani'', the largest of the genus. The animal was similar to a dog in the form of its body and jaws, and probably able to kill prey such as wallabies and other herbivores larger than itself. More specimens were described by

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in 2014, also discovered at the Alcoota site, revealing greater variety within the species and revising the weight estimates to greater than 35 kilograms. This material was found in a newly excavated site, named as "Shattered Dreams", that was opened by a backhoe to allow the extraction of specimens. The new ''T. potens'' specimens were a left dentary and maxilla which included the previously unknown anterior section of the dentition. The teeth of the new material exhibited a more gracile form than that previously assigned to ''T. potens'', displaying a closer resemblance to ''T. cynocephalus''. An examination of tooth wear that suggests durophagy, probably bone-cracking behaviour, is interpreted as an evolutionary recent practice, to which the dentition was only partially suited, or a consequence of the ecological circumstances that created the mass assemblage of fossils at the same site. The modern thylacine was not recorded as cracking bones as part of its regular feeding habits, but known as a consumer of carrion, and the individual ''T. potens'' may have encountered a mass death during a period of drought in the sub-tropical Alcoota region. The revision of ''Thylacinus potens'' by Yates in 2014 concluded that the characteristics were closest to those of the thylacine, the most derived characters of the thylacinid phylogeny.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thylacinus Potens Prehistoric mammals of Australia Prehistoric thylacines Miocene marsupials Fossil taxa described in 1967 Taxa named by Michael Woodburne