Palorchestes

Palorchestes ("ancient leaper") is an extinct genus of large terrestrial, herbivorous Australian marsupial of the family Palorchestidae, living from the Miocene through to the Late Pleistocene. Like other palorchestids, it had highly retracted nasal region suggesting that it had a prehensile lip, as well as highly unusual clawed forelimbs that were used to grasp vegetation. The generic name was coined in 1873 by anatomist Richard Owen, who first found what he thought was the fragmentary jaw of a prehistoric kangaroo and derived the name from ancient Greek terms for "ancient" and "leaper". Despite Owen explicitly stating the etymology of the name in his description, palaeontologist Harold Fletcher published a translation as "the ancient dancer" in 1945. When more postcranial elements were found, Palorchestes was realized as not a macropod, but a diprotodontid. Owen's description as a giant kangaroo was revised in 1958 by Jack T. Woods of the Queensland Museum, allying the genus to the Diprotodontia order. Another genus is probably ancestral to these species, thus named Propalorchestes; it shared some characteristics of the molars, but had shorter jaws and therefore snout. The genus is represented in the fossil record by five or six species, The fossil dentary of a young adult found in Pleistocene deposits in the Darling Downs region of southeast Queensland, although limited by the rarity of specimens and comparable remains of the genus, was distinguishable from P. azael, P. parvus, and P. painei. The specimen provides evidence of sympatry with another species of the genus, rather than the apparent sequence of form and size from the mid-Miocene to recent era, and may represent a new species or sexual dimorphism in a smaller species. The genus was allied to other diprotodontid genera, Ngapakaldia and Pitikantia, firstly recognised as a subfamily Palorchestinae (Stirton, 1967), later elevated to familial status with the order (Archer and Bartholomai, 1978).