''Vombatus hacketti'', Hackett's wombat, is an extinct species of wombat that lived in

Southwest Australia Southwest Australia is a biogeographic region in Western Australia. It includes the Mediterranean-climate area of southwestern Australia, which is home to a diverse and distinctive flora and fauna. The region is also known as the Southwest Aus ...

during the

Late Pleistocene The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial Age (geology), age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as Upper Pleistocene from a Stratigraphy, stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division of ...

. It survived until very recently, going between 10,000 and 20,000 BP.

Description

Fossils of this species were first found in Mammoth Cave. Its skull was larger than that of the

common wombat The common wombat (''Vombatus ursinus''), also known as the coarse-haired wombat or bare-nosed wombat, is a marsupial, one of three extant species of wombats and the only one in the genus ''Vombatus''. The common wombat grows to an average of lo ...

, indicating it grew to larger sizes. Hackett's wombat survived longer than most other prehistoric Australian fauna. This may indicate that the arrival of humans may have played a greater role in its extinction, rather than just climate change.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q108131049 Prehistoric vombatiforms Pleistocene marsupials Pleistocene mammals of Australia Pleistocene extinctions