''Thylacinus yorkellus'' is a fossil species of carnivorous marsupial, a sister species of the recently extinct ''
Thylacinus cynocephalus
The thylacine (; binomial name ''Thylacinus cynocephalus''), also commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger or Tasmanian wolf, was a carnivorous marsupial that was native to the Australian mainland and the islands of Tasmania and New Guinea. Th ...
'', the Tasmanian tiger, both of which existed on mainland Australia.
Taxonomy
A species described by
Adam Yates
Adam Richard Yates (born 7 August 1992) is a British professional road and track racing cyclist who rides for UCI WorldTeam . Yates placed fourth overall at the 2016 Tour de France and became the first British rider to win the Young rider clas ...
, published in 2015, emerging from a study of the left dentary of a thylacinid obtained at the
Curramulka
Curramulka, nicknamed "Curry", is a town in the Australian state of South Australia on the Yorke Peninsula. Curramulka is within easy driving distance of the coastal resort towns of Port Victoria and Port Vincent and is north-east of Minlat ...
fossil site in South Australia.
The holotype had been examined by Neville Pledge, who remarked on the possibility of a new species in 1992.
The specific epithet combines the name of the region it was discovered, the
Yorke Peninsula
The Yorke Peninsula, known as Guuranda by the original inhabitants, the Narungga people, is a peninsula located northwest and west of Adelaide in South Australia, between Spencer Gulf on the west and Gulf St Vincent on the east. The peninsula ...
, and the Latin , a diminutive suffix that denotes a species that was smaller than ''
Thylacinus cynocephalus
The thylacine (; binomial name ''Thylacinus cynocephalus''), also commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger or Tasmanian wolf, was a carnivorous marsupial that was native to the Australian mainland and the islands of Tasmania and New Guinea. Th ...
''.
Description
A comparatively small species of ''
Thylacinus
''Thylacinus'' is a genus of extinct carnivorous marsupials in the family Thylacinidae. The only recent member was the thylacine
The thylacine (; binomial name ''Thylacinus cynocephalus''), also commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger or ...
'' that is known to have existed during the late Miocene epoch. The author of the species suggests that evidence supports the species existing during that later
Pliocene
The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58
An estimated weight for two known specimens, calculated with regression functions applied to dasyuromorphian data, is noted as 17.8 and 15.9 kilograms. The average body mass of ''T. cynocephalus'' was greater than this estimate, around 30 kg, and the species was much smaller than range of estimated weights, 38.7 to 57.3 kg, for ''
Thylacinus potens
''Thylacinus potens'' ("powerful pouched animal") was the largest species of the family Thylacinidae, originally known from a single poorly preserved fossil discovered by Michael O. Woodburne in 1967 in a Late Miocene locality near Alice Springs, ...
'' and ''
Thylacinus megiriani
''Thylacinus megiriani'' lived during the late Miocene, around 8 million years ago. The area ''T. megiriani'' inhabited in the Northern Territory was covered in forest with a permanent supply of water.
''Thylacinus megiriani'' was a quadrupedal ...