Abstract

Malleodectes? wentworthi, sp. nov. is a highly specialized durophagous marsupial from a Middle Miocene limestone cave deposit in the Riversleigh World Heritage area, northern Australia. It provides the first information regarding the lower dentition of malleodectids, an extinct family of dasyuromorphians. It is also the smallest durophagous member of Metatheria (marsupials and their stem relatives) known to date, with an estimated body mass of ∼70–90 g, an order of magnitude smaller than other known malleodectids (Malleodectes mirabilis and Ma. moenia ∼1 kg). As in other malleodectids, Ma.? wentworthi has a hypertrophied, dome-like premolar specialized for crushing hard foods. Tentative assignment to the genus Malleodectes is based on derived similarities of the premolar and molar dentition to those of larger species of Malleodectes (known only from upper dentitions), and occlusal compatibility. Quantitative morphofunctional analyses of dental indices and mandibular bending strength are congruent with the previously proposed hypothesis that malleodectids may have been uniquely specialized snail-eaters. Maximum parsimony phylogenetic analysis of a 173 morphological character dataset, with a molecular scaffold enforced, placed Ma.? wentworthi within Dasyuromorphia, in a basal polytomy with Dasyuridae and Mutpuracinus archibaldi, to the exclusion of Barinya wangala, Myrmecobiidae and Thylacinidae. Bayesian analysis of a total evidence dataset that combined morphological with nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequence data places Ma.? wentworthi as a sister taxon to crown-clade Dasyuridae, although support for this relationship is weak.