The broad-faced potoroo (''Potorous platyops'') is an extinct
potoroid
Potoroidae is a family of marsupials, small Australian animals known as bettongs, potoroos, and rat-kangaroos. All are rabbit-sized, brown, jumping marsupials and resemble a large rodent or a very small wallaby.
Taxonomy
The potoroids are sma ...
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 ...
that was found in southwestern
Australia. The first specimen was collected in 1839, and described by
John Gould
John Gould (; 14 September 1804 – 3 February 1881) was an English ornithologist. He published a number of monographs on birds, illustrated by plates produced by his wife, Elizabeth Gould, and several other artists, including Edward Lear, ...
in 1844. Only a small number of specimens have been collected since. The last live capture was in 1875. Subfossil remains indicate that it had an extensive distribution around the semiarid coastal districts of
Southwest Australia.
The habitat of the broad-faced potoroo is almost entirely unknown, but unlike its relatives, such as the long-nosed potoroo ''
Potorous tridactylus
The long-nosed potoroo (''Potorous tridactylus'') is a small, hopping, gerbil-like mammal native to forests and shrubland of southeastern Australia and Tasmania. A member of the rat-kangaroo family (Potoroidae), it lives alone and digs at night f ...
'' and long-footed ''
Potorous longipes
The long-footed potoroo (''Potorous longipes'') is a small marsupial found in southeastern Australia, restricted to an area around the coastal border between New South Wales and Victoria. It was first recorded in 1967 when an adult male was caug ...
'', they do not seem to have lived in dense understories in forests. Preserved specimens indicate that it was smaller than other potoroos at around 300 mm (1 ft) long with a 180-mm tail. Their weight is estimated at 800 g. Their coat was grizzled with yellowish hairs above and greyish white below. Their body was similar in shape to that of other potoroids. Their ears were small and rounded, muzzle fairly short, and cheeks notably puffy.
Taxonomy
The first description was published by
John Gould
John Gould (; 14 September 1804 – 3 February 1881) was an English ornithologist. He published a number of monographs on birds, illustrated by plates produced by his wife, Elizabeth Gould, and several other artists, including Edward Lear, ...
,
using a specimen obtained by his collector
John Gilbert at "Walyema Swamps near Northam, Western Australia". Gilbert visited this inland region while collecting around the recently established
Swan River Colony. The site he referred to was determined to be Lake Walyormouring.
The single specimen forwarded to Gould was presented to the
Linnean Society of London
The Linnean Society of London is a learned society dedicated to the study and dissemination of information concerning natural history, evolution, and taxonomy. It possesses several important biological specimen, manuscript and literature colle ...
, and the partial skull and skin of a female was deposited in the
British Museum of Natural History
The Natural History Museum in London is a museum that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum ...
.
There were few collected after Gould's initial description. There was one animal collected by
James Drummond and recorded in a letter in the 1840s, the collector
George Masters prepared four specimens in the 1860s, presumably when he made a large collection of taxa at
Mordup. The last collection of living ''Potorous platyops'' was in 1874, collected by
William Webb and are now held at the
Macleay Museum
The Macleay Museum at The University of Sydney, was a natural history museum located on the University's campus, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The Museum was amalgamanted into Chau Chak Wing Museum, which opened in 2020.
The Macleay ...
in Sydney.
Curator and collector
Hedley H. Finlayson described the remains of a
potoroine
Potoroidae is a family of marsupials, small Australian animals known as bettongs, potoroos, and rat-kangaroos. All are rabbit-sized, brown, jumping marsupials and resemble a large rodent or a very small wallaby.
Taxonomy
The potoroids are s ...
animal found in a South Australian cave, which were similar to the ''Potorous platyops''. However, the bones were retrieved from a site far from where the ''Potorous platyops'' was thought to be found, as well as the teeth being different from previously collections specimens. He ended up naming it as a new species, ''Potorous morgani''. The specimen was later identified as a ''Potorous platyops''. The skull that was studied and was held at a South Australian museum, amongst a deposit of multiple taxa from
Kelly's Hill Caves, which was collected by
A.M. Morgan. The
specific epithet ''morgani'' refers to the collector. Finlayson's 1934 description recognised a close similarity to this species. When he obtained more specimens, which were collected at the same cave system on
Kangaroo Island
Kangaroo Island, also known as Karta Pintingga (literally 'Island of the Dead' in the language of the Kaurna people), is Australia's third-largest island, after Tasmania and Melville Island. It lies in the state of South Australia, southwest ...
by Edith May, he obtained a second partial skull.
Comparison of the dentition and other morphological characteristics was limited to works published by
G. R. Waterhouse
George Robert Waterhouse (6 March 1810 – 21 January 1888) was an English natural history, naturalist. He was a keeper at the department of geology and later curator of the Zoological Society of London's museum.
Early life
George was born ...
(1846),
Oldfield Thomas (1888) and
B. Arthur Bensley (1903) whose descriptions of ''P. platyops'' are recorded at the BMNH.
Common names include broad-faced potoroo and a name from the
Nyungar language
Noongar (; also Nyungar ) is an Australian Aboriginal language or dialect continuum, spoken by some members of the Noongar community and others. It is taught actively in Australia, including at schools, universities and through public broadcastin ...
, ''moda'',
which was recorded by Gilbert and noted in Gould's 1844 description as ''mor-da'', and ''mort'' or ''moort'' by other ecologists writing shortly after its extinction.
The name was obtained through an interview with Nyungar peoples at King George Sound by Gilbert.
Early records show that it was also named the broad-faced rat kangaroo.
Description
![BroadFacedPotoroo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/BroadFacedPotoroo.jpg)
The broad-faced potoroo is a member of the genus ''
Potorous''. It is described as having a relatively broad skull and shorter muzzle.
The species is presumed to have become extinct sometime after the last recorded capture of the animal in 1875, and sometime before 1905.
The colour of the
pelage
Fur is a thick growth of hair that covers the skin of mammals. It consists of a combination of oily guard hair on top and thick underfur beneath. The guard hair keeps moisture from reaching the skin; the underfur acts as an insulating blanket ...
is greyish brown at the upper-side. Straw-yellow hairs are interspersed through the fur to give a streaked effect. The underside and the flanks are pale grey. The head and body are about 305 millimetres in length, while the tail is about 178 mm long. Their hind feet are about 54 mm in length and their weight is approximately 800 grams.
Their noses are short and blunt, which is an unusual characteristic among potorines and is usually associated with species such as the
rufous bettong
The rufous rat-kangaroo or rufous bettong (''Aepyprymnus rufescens'') is a small, jumping, rat-like mammal native to eastern Australia. It is the only species in the genus ''Aepyprymnus''. The largest member of the rat-kangaroo family (Potoroida ...
(''Aepyprymnus rufescens'') and the
desert rat-kangaroo (''Caloprymnus campestris'').
Ecology
The behaviour of the species has not been recorded,
and nothing is known of its diet. The scant record of its habitat includes those provided by John Gilbert's informants, one of whom said, "All I could glean of its habits was that it was killed in a thicket surrounding one of the salt lagoons in the interior".
An assessment of documents prior to the 20th century concluded the only ecological change to affect the population were anecdotal reports of a "disease", similar to one that had resulted in the sudden absence of similar species. A synthesis combining other historical evidence proposes what may have been an
epizootic
In epizoology, an epizootic (from Greek: ''epi-'' upon + ''zoon'' animal) is a disease event in a nonhuman animal population analogous to an epidemic in humans. An epizootic may be restricted to a specific locale (an "outbreak"), general (an "epi ...
during the 1890s that precipitated their extinction.
No historical evidence could be found to link the conclusion of South African collector
Guy C. Shortridge, writing in 1910, that ecological changes such as bushfire and the introduction of cats were directly linked to the species' decline.
Guy Shortridge searched extensively for this species on his collecting expedition near
Bremer Bay Bremer may refer to:
People
*Bremer (surname)
* Bremer Ehrler (born 1914), American politician
* Bremer (born 1997), Brazilian footballer
Places
;Australia
*Bremer Bay, Western Australia
* Bremer Marine Park
*Bremer Island
* Bremer River (disambig ...
, finding ''
Potorous gilbertii
Gilbert's potoroo or ngilkat (''Potorous gilbertii'') is Australia's most endangered marsupial, the rarest marsupial in the world, and one of the world's rarest critically endangered mammals, found in south-western Western Australia. It is a ...
'' skulls at caves near Margaret River, but could only provide the historical details of this species provided to him in his 1910 report. The information he reported—assumed to be from
Nyungar
The Noongar (, also spelt Noongah, Nyungar , Nyoongar, Nyoongah, Nyungah, Nyugah, and Yunga ) are Aboriginal Australian peoples who live in the south-west corner of Western Australia, from Geraldton on the west coast to Esperance on the so ...
informants—was that the species became extinct in 1905, were similar to the
quokka
The quokka (''Setonix brachyurus'', ) is a small macropod about the size of a domestic cat. It is the only member of the genus ''Setonix''. Like other marsupials in the macropod family (such as kangaroos and wallabies), the quokka is herbivo ...
in range and habits, and had been commonly found and often captured in large quantities.
The remains were examined the following year, along with the remains of a
dibbler
Dibbler (''Parantechinus apicalis'') is an endangered species of marsupial. It is an inhabitant of the southwest mainland of Western Australia and some offshore islands. It is a member of the order Dasyuromorphia, and the only member of the g ...
, which was found along with the ''P. gilbertii'' remains in a deposit beneath a moving dune system. Another set of bones were found in an midden beneath a large peppermint (''
Agonis flexuosa
''Agonis flexuosa'' is a species of tree that grows in the south west of Western Australia. It is easily the most common of the ''Agonis'' species, and is one of the most recognisable trees of Western Australia, being commonly grown in parks an ...
''), which was assumed to be the feeding roost of a predatory bird such as an owl. This site, near
Hunter River Hunter River may refer to:
*Hunter River (New South Wales), Australia
*Hunter River (Western Australia)
*Hunter River, New Zealand
*Hunter River (Prince Edward Island), Canada
**Hunter River, Prince Edward Island, community on Hunter River, Canada
...
, was partly preserved by a sand dune and included species introduced after the colonisation of Australia, possibly placing the date of these remains within recent history.
Sub-fossil remains identified as ''P. platyops'' were also found in a survey of deposits on the
Eyre Peninsula
The Eyre Peninsula is a triangular peninsula in South Australia. It is bounded by the Spencer Gulf on the east, the Great Australian Bight on the west, and the Gawler Ranges to the north.
Originally called Eyre’s Peninsula, it was named af ...
, accumulations that may have been middens of pre-colonial peoples of the region.
Distribution
The few records of live specimens are restricted to Southwest Australia. The species could have already been near-extinct when Gilbert obtained his specimen, and no specific localities are known with any certainty.
Sub-fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
remains indicate a wide distribution range, extending from the southern to the western regions of Australia, including
Nullarbor Plain
The Nullarbor Plain ( ; Latin: feminine of , 'no', and , 'tree') is part of the area of flat, almost treeless, arid or semi-arid country of southern Australia, located on the Great Australian Bight coast with the Great Victoria Desert to its ...
, and perhaps as far north as the Northwest Cape region.
Remains have also been found on Kangaroo Island.
Some evidence indicates that ''P. platyops'', like the desert-dwelling rat-kangaroo (''
Caloprymnus campestris
The desert rat-kangaroo (''Caloprymnus campestris''), also called the buff-nosed rat-kangaroo, plains rat-kangaroo or oolacunta,Tony Robinson & Tiana Forrest (2012A possible sighting of the Desert Rat-kangaroo or Oolacunta (''Caloprymnus campestr ...
''), was already in decline when the invasive European rabbit became established in the species' former range.
References
Sources
*
External links
biodiversitylibrary.orgphotographic series of sub-fossil remains by H. H. Finlayson, 1938.
{{Taxonbar, from=Q209609
Potoroids
Extinct mammals of Australia
Extinct marsupials
Mammal extinctions since 1500
Mammals of Western Australia
Mammals described in 1844