Wakaleo vanderleueri, Clemens & Plane, 1974

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 : 331

† Wakaleo

SPECIES SCORED: † Wakaleo vanderleueri (type species).

GEOLOGICAL PROVENANCE OF SCORED SPECIMENS: Bullock Creek Local Fauna, Northern Territory; Encore site (Riversleigh Faunal Zone D), Riversleigh World Heritage Area, Queensland, Australia.

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

ASSIGNED AGE RANGE: 15.970 –5.333 Mya.

REMARKS: † Wakaleo vanderleueri is known from a single exceptionally well-preserved holotype cranium (CPC 26604, which was described in detail by Murray et al., 1987) and additional dental material from the middle Miocene Bullock Creek Local Fauna (Clemens and Plane, 1974; Megirian, 1986; Murray and Megirian, 1990). We used these Bullock Creek specimens to score character data, together with additional dental specimens from the Encore Site of Riversleigh Faunal Zone D that were also referred to † W. vanderleuri by Gillespie et al. (2014). A single isolated M3 (QM F36466) from the Golden Steph (GS) site of Riversleigh Faunal Zone C was identified by Gillespie et al. (2014) as representing † W. vanderleuri , but this specimen has not been used for scoring purposes here.