Rhizosthenurus flanneryi, Kear, 2002

Beck, Robin M. D., Voss, Robert S. & Jansa, Sharon A., 2022, Craniodental Morphology And Phylogeny Of Marsupials, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2022 (457), pp. 1-353 : 337

† Rhizosthenurus

SPECIES SCORED: † Rhizosthenurus flanneryi (type and only described species).

GEOLOGICAL PROVENANCE OF SCORED SPECIMENS: Encore Site, Riversleigh Faunal Zone D, Riversleigh World Heritage Area, Queensland, Australia.

AGE OF SCORED SPECIMENS: Riversleigh Faunal Zone D is estimated to be early late Miocene based on biostratigraphy (see above). In the absence of radiometric dates, however, we have assumed the entire span of the late Miocene (Tortonian to Messinian; Cohen et al., 2013 [updated]) for this terminal.

ASSIGNED AGE RANGE: 11.630 –5.333 Mya.

REMARKS: Kear et al. (2001a) described macropodiform postcranial remains from the Encore Site of Riversleigh Faunal Zone D, which they interpreted as representing an unidentified species of the “bulungamayine” genus † Wanburoo. In a subsequent paper, Kear (2002) reallocated this material to a new species, † Rhizosthenurus flanneryi . The sthenurine affinities of † R. flanneryi were supported by Kear et al.’s (2001a) and Kear’s (2002) phylogenetic analyses of postcranial characters, and by subsequent analyses of combined craniodental and postcranial evidence (Kear et al., 2007; Bates et al., 2014; Black et al., 2014c; Travouillon et al., 2014b, 2015a; Cooke et al., 2015). A well-preserved skull is associated with the holotype postcranial skeleton of † R. flanneryi (QM F31456), and additional isolated teeth from the Encore site have also been referred to this taxon in an unpublished thesis (Kirkham, 2004). We examined these craniodental specimens of † R. flanneryi (which have yet to be formally described) to score character data for this study.