Quinkana
| Quinkana Temporal range: Late Oligocene–Pleistocene |
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| Quinkana fortirostrum | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Sauropsida |
| Order: | Crocodilia |
| Family: | Crocodylidae |
| Subfamily: | † Mekosuchinae |
| Genus: | Quinkana Molnar, 1981 |
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Quinkana is an extinct genus of mekosuchine crocodile that lived in Australia from ~24 million years ago to ~40,000 years ago. By the Pleistocene Quinkana had become one of the top terrestrial predators of Australia, possessing long legs and ziphodont teeth (lateromedially compressed, recurved and serrated).[note 1] Quinkana comes from the "Quinkans", a legendary folk from Aboriginal myths.
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[edit] Species
The species within Quinkana include: the type species Q. fortirostrum from Queensland of the Pliocene and Pleistocene, Q. babarra from Queensland of the Early Pliocene, Q. timara from the Northern Territory of the Middle Miocene, and Q. meboldi from Queensland of the Late Oligocene.
[edit] Appearance
The older species (Q. meboldi and Q. timara) were small in size, about 2 metres (6 ft 7 in), compared to the large Plio-Pleistocene species which evolved. Quinkana fortirostrum has been estimated to have exceeded 5 metres (16 ft) in length, making it at the time one of Australia's largest predators, surpassed in size by the giant monitor lizard, Megalania (Varanus priscus).
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Quinkana is a genus within the subfamily Mekosuchinae. Other genera included in this family are: Australosuchus, Baru, Kambara, Mekosuchus, Pallimnarchus and Trilophosuchus.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Ziphodont teeth tend to arise in terrestrial crocodilians because, unlike their aquatic cousins, they are unable to dispatch their prey by simply holding them underwater and drowning them; they thus need cutting teeth with which to slice open their victims.
[edit] References
- Willis, P.M.A.; Mackness, B. (1996). "Quinkana babarra, a new species of ziphodont mekosuchine crocodile from the early Pliocene Bluff Downs Local Fauna, Northern Australia, with a revision of the genus". Proceedings and Journal of the Linnean Society of New South Wales 116: 143–151.
[edit] External links
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