''Nototherium'' ("Southern Beast") is an extinct

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial n ...

diprotodontid The Diprotodontidae are an extinct family of large herbivorous marsupials, endemic to Australia and New Guinea during the Oligocene through Pleistocene periods from 28.4 million to 40,000 years ago. The family consisted of large quadrupedal t ...

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 ...

from Australia and

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...

. This mammal had

hypsodont Hypsodont is a pattern of dentition with high-crowned teeth and enamel extending past the gum line, providing extra material for wear and tear. Some examples of animals with hypsodont dentition are cows and horses; all animals that feed on grit ...

molars and weighed around 500kg.Ross D.E. MacPhee, Hans-Dieter Sues, 1999, Extinctions in Near Time, p.251, Springer Science & Business Media It was a relative of the larger ''

Diprotodon ''Diprotodon'' (Ancient Greek: "two protruding front teeth") is an extinct genus of marsupial from the Pleistocene of Australia, containing one species, ''D. optatum''. The earliest finds date to 1.77 million to 780,000 years ago, but most speci ...

'' and a distant kin to modern

wombat Wombats are short-legged, muscular quadrupedal marsupials that are native to Australia. They are about in length with small, stubby tails and weigh between . All three of the extant species are members of the family Vombatidae. They are ad ...

Species

* ''Nototherium inerme'' Owen, 1845 * ''Nototherium watutense'' Anderson, 1937 (formerly considered to be a member of '' Kolopsis'') Plio-Pleistocene, New Guinea. * ''Nototherium mitchelli'' Owen, 1845 Pleistocene, Australia (possibly a junior synonym of ''N. inerme'')

References

* ''Wildlife of Gondwana: Dinosaurs and Other Vertebrates from the Ancient Supercontinent (Life of the Past)'' by Pat Vickers Rich, Thomas Hewitt Rich, Francesco Coffa, and Steven Morton * ''Prehistoric Mammals of Australia and New Guinea: One Hundred Million Years of Evolution'' by John A. Long, Michael Archer, Timothy Flannery, and Suzanne Hand Nothotherium mitchelli

Pleistocene marsupials Pliocene marsupials Prehistoric vombatiforms Prehistoric mammals of Australia Prehistoric marsupial genera Fossil taxa described in 1845 Taxa named by Richard Owen {{paleo-marsupial-stub