Propleopus

Propleopus is an extinct genus of marsupials. The genus contains three species: P. chillagoensis from the Plio-Pleistocene, and P. oscillans and P. wellingtonensis from the Pleistocene.^[4]

Propleopus Temporal range: 4.3–0.055 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓ Pliocene - Pleistocene
Diagram of the holotype of P. oscillans
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Infraclass:	Marsupialia
Order:	Diprotodontia
Family:	Hypsiprymnodontidae
Genus:	†Propleopus Longman, 1924[1]
Type species
Triclis oscillans De Vis, 1888[2]
Species[3]
P. oscillans (De Vis, 1888) P. chillagoensis Archer, Bartholomai & Marshall, 1978 P. wellingtonensis Archer & Flannery, 1985

Discovery and naming

The type species Propleopus oscillans was first named under the genus Triclis by Charles Walter De Vis in 1888.^[2] Because the German entomologist Hermann Loew had already named the genus Triclis for a robber fly in 1851, Albert Heber Longman named a replacement name Propleopus in 1924, combining the prefix pró (πρό, 'before') with pleopus, the latter in reference to the junior synonym of Hypsiprymnodon moschatus: Pleopus nudicaudatus named by Richard Owen in 1877.^[1] In 1978 and 1985, Archer and colleagues named two more species, P. chillagoensis and P. wellingtonensis, and provided a taxonomic revision of the genus.^[3]

Description

Speculative life restoration

In contrast to most other kangaroos, and similar to their small extant relative, the musky rat-kangaroo, they were probably omnivorous and quadrupedal.^[5] Propleopus is estimated to have weighed around 35.5–47.1 kilograms (78–104 lb).^[6]