''Malleodectes'' is a genus of unusual marsupial, first discovered in 2011 at Riversleigh, Queensland,

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. It could grow as large as a

ferret The ferret (''Mustela furo'') is a small, Domestication, domesticated species belonging to the family Mustelidae. The ferret is most likely a domesticated form of the wild European polecat (''Mustela putorius''), evidenced by their Hybrid (biol ...

, and lived in the Miocene, . The reason for its name, which means "Hammer Biter", is because it has blunt, hammer like teeth, not known from any other

mammal Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or ...

extant or extinct. However, Scott Hocknull from the Queensland Museum has noticed similarities to the modern pink-tongued skink (''Cyclodomorphus gerrardii''), a

reptile Reptiles, as most commonly defined are the animals in the class Reptilia ( ), a paraphyletic grouping comprising all sauropsids except birds. Living reptiles comprise turtles, crocodilians, squamates (lizards and snakes) and rhynchocephalians ( ...

specialised for eating snails. This suggests that ''Malleodectes'' too was a specialised snail hunter.

Taxonomy

The description of the new genus and two species, was published in 2011, based on fossilised type material discovered at a Riversleigh site. The type species is named ''

Malleodectes mirabilis ''Malleodectes'' is a genus of unusual marsupial, first discovered in 2011 at Australian Fossil Mammal Sites (Riversleigh), Riversleigh, Queensland, Australia. It could grow as large as a ferret, and lived in the Miocene, . The reason for its nam ...

'' and the second description published as ''

Malleodectes moenia ''Malleodectes'' is a genus of unusual marsupial, first discovered in 2011 at Riversleigh, Queensland, Australia. It could grow as large as a ferret, and lived in the Miocene, . The reason for its name, which means "Hammer Biter", is because i ...

''; their generic epithet combines terms derived from the Latin, ''malleo'' meaning hammer, and Ancient Greek, ''dectes'' for biter, in reference to the unusual dentition. ''Malleodectes'' was classified as the sole genus of Malleodectidae in a 2016 revision, with the family allied to Dasyuromorphia.

Description

A marsupial with highly specialised dentition, an enlarged premolar with a flattened profile used to hammer open the shells of snails found in its wet forested environment. This tooth was compared by the authors to a genus of skinks, '' Cyclodomorphus'', and concluded this represented evolutionary convergence with the modern skinks that have similar adaptation to their diet of snails; the authors gave a generalised description of this unusual animal as a "marsupial-skink". A leading author on the research and description of the species, professor Michael Archer, said of the type species, "''Malleodectes mirabilis'' was a bizarre mammal, as strange in its own way as a koala or kangaroo …,". Fossil material associated with genus had been collected by workers at Riversleigh in the years leading to the crucial discovery of a juvenile jaw containing unerupted adult teeth. The juvenile specimen was found at a cave floor deposit with the remains of other animals, the AL90 site, and postulated to have fallen from its mother into a cave that once existed in the limestone formation.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q6744125 Miocene marsupials Prehistoric mammals of Australia Riversleigh fauna Fossil taxa described in 2011 Prehistoric marsupial genera Dasyuromorphs