Earliest known Australian Tertiary mammal fauna

Abstract

REMAINS of Early Eocene vertebrates from freshwater clays near Murgon, southeastern Queensland, represent Australia's oldest marsupials, bats, non-volant placentals, frogs, madtsoiid snakes, trionychid turtles1and birds. Radiometric dating of illites forming part of the matrix of the mammal-bearing zone has given a minimum age estimate of 54.6 ± 0.05 x 106 years, which is roughly twice as old as any marsupials previously known from Australia2 and well before the 38 million year (Myr) separation of Australia from Antarctica/South America3. All marsupials so far known from the Tingamarra Local Fauna are more derived (being dilambdodont) than peradectids. None of them is clearly a member of a previously known Australian family, but some could be uniquely plesiomorphic dasyuroids or perameloids. Another is autapomorphically specialized and indicative of at least partial isolation of the Australian portion of Gondwana. Here we report on the discovery of a tooth of the earliest non-volant placental known from Australia, Tingamarra porterorum gen.et sp. nov., which seems to be a condylarth-like placental mammal. The presence of non-volant placentals in the Early Tertiary of Australia challenges a common presumption that marsupials dominated Australia's therian assemblages because of failure of such placentals to reach Australia before the Late Tertiary.