Ekaltadeta ima, Archer & Flannery, 1985

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 : 334

† Ekaltadeta

SPECIES SCORED: † Ekaltadeta ima (type species).

GEOLOGICAL PROVENANCE OF SCORED SPECIMENS: Riversleigh Faunal zones A, B, and C, Riversleigh World Heritage Area, Queensland, Australia.

AGE OF SCORED SPECIMENS: Riversleigh Faunal zones A, B, and C are interpreted to be late Oligocene, early Miocene, and middle Miocene, respectively, based on biostratigraphy (see above). In the absence of radiometric dates, we have assumed the entire span of the large Oligocene to the middle Miocene (Chattian to Serravallian; Cohen et al., 2013 [updated]) for this terminal.

ASSIGNED AGE RANGE: 27.820 –11.630 Mya.

REMARKS: † Ekaltadeta ima is known from numerous craniodental specimens, including two well-preserved crania (QM F14236 and F36330; Wroe et al., 1998). These specimens exhibit a number of plesiomorphic features, notably retention of the second upper and lower premolars throughout adulthood (Wroe and Archer, 1995), whereas all other known macropodiforms lose these teeth over the course of ontogeny (see char. 117). A second species, † E. jamiemulvaneyi , was described from Riversleigh Faunal Zone C by Wroe (1996b), but we did not score character data from that taxon. Currently, † Ekaltadeta , the Pliocene † Jackmahoneya , and the Plio-Pleistocene † Propleopus are usually classified as members of a distinct subfamily (†Propleopinae) within Hypsiprymnodontidae (e.g., Wroe and Archer, 1995; Ride et al., 1997; Wroe, 1997; Wroe et al., 1998; Kear and Cooke, 2001; Long et al., 2002; Black et al., 2012b). However, some recent phylogenetic analyses suggest that † Ekaltadeta and other propleopines may be more closely related to taxa currently classified as members of the family † Balbaridae than to Hypsiprymnodon (Kear et al., 2007; Kear and Pledge, 2008; Travouillon et al., 2014b, 2015a; Cooke et al., 2015; Butler et al., 2016, 2018; den Boer and Kear, 2018: supplemental data). The analysis of Travouillon et al. (2016), however, recovered a clade comprising Recent and fossil species of Hypsiprymnodon , † Ekaltadeta , † Jackmahoneya and † Propleopus that was sister to all other macropodiforms they included.