''Woodburnodon'' is an extinct genus of

microbiotheria Microbiotheria is an australidelphian marsupial order that encompasses two families, Microbiotheriidae and Woodburnodontidae, and is represented by only one extant species, the monito del monte, and a number of extinct species known from fossi ...

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 po ...

whose fossils have been found on

Seymour Island Seymour Island or Marambio Island, is an island in the chain of 16 major islands around the tip of the Graham Land on the Antarctic Peninsula. Graham Land is the closest part of Antarctica to South America. It lies within the section of the isla ...

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...

. It lived during the

Eocene The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene' ...

epoch.

Taxonomy

The genus is represented by single species, ''Woodburnodon casei'', which was described in 2007 from fossils found on the

Antarctic peninsula The Antarctic Peninsula, known as O'Higgins Land in Chile and Tierra de San Martín in Argentina, and originally as Graham Land in the United Kingdom and the Palmer Peninsula in the United States, is the northernmost part of mainland Antarctic ...

. Woodburnodon is currently the only formally described species in the family Woodburnodontidae, although fossils of a unidentified Early Eocene woodburnodontids have also been found in

Patagonia Patagonia () refers to a geographical region that encompasses the southern end of South America, governed by Argentina and Chile. The region comprises the southern section of the Andes Mountains with lakes, fjords, temperate rainforests, and gl ...

Description

''Woodburnodon'' was the largest known member of the order Microbiotheria. It was at least three or four times larger than the microbiotherid '' Pachybiotherium'', which has been estimated at . This would put the size of ''Woodburnodon'' at around .

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q33136792 Prehistoric marsupial genera Eocene mammals of Antarctica Fossils of Antarctica Microbiotheria