Was This Marsupial A Lion: Or A Pouch-Robbing, Meat-Browsing, Cookie-Cutting Koala?

By Robin and the Honey Badger

Robin and the Honey Badger’s mission is to recharge biology with originality for you, the non-specialist reader. Exploring the Bio-edge is a series of e-essays presenting lateral thoughts in search of ever more interesting stories from biology. In this e-essay: in our determination to see a pouched felid, have we overlooked an even more gripping dentition? The very name of the marsupial lion – the largest-ever mammalian meat-eater of Australia – seems biased by an assumption that some extinct marsupial must have been a counterpart to sabre-tooth cats. But any such bias buries the most interesting fact about this fossil species: namely that a plant-eating ancestor was recruited to meat-eating. Join us as we turn the conventional interpretation of this most dramatic member of the marsupial fauna on its head – and particularly on its canine teeth.

Each morning Robin and the Honey Badger wake up to a world of Nature with new curiosity. Which aspects of the natural world have been underlooked? Which adaptations or non-adaptations of organisms have been downplayed because of some theoretical bias? Which observations have yet to be integrated because of interdisciplinary timidity? How laterally can we think as we cruise the bewildering diversity of life forms on Earth? Join us in our mission of Exploring the Bio-edge in a series of e-essays that fearlessly - but accurately - cover all corners of biology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robin and the Honey Badger
• Release date: Sep 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301953141

Robin and the Honey Badger

Robin Far from being a mere featherhead, Robin is a mainstream scientist operating at the centre of current environmental concerns. His work has three main components: primary academic research, environmental consulting, and entrepreneurship. He has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers and book chapters in the fields of ecology and soil science. Robin’s light and curious mind achieves an avian mobility among the many fields of biological knowledge, making surprising connections and delighting in new perspectives. The Honey Badger Restlessly digging beneath the surface, the Honey Badger is in constant search for the honey of a more fulfilling biology that mines the common ground of apparently separate fields of academia. Performing research on several continents and across a broad spectrum of organisms from microbes to megaherbivores, the Honey Badger is the primary author of 35 peer-reviewed scientific papers and book chapters in zoology, botany, biogeography, and nutrition. An ecological theorist whose emphasis is on intercontinental comparison and original synthesis and integration, the Honey Badger has also published semi-popular articles on various biological topics in several wildlife magazines.

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Was this marsupial a lion – or a pouch-robbing, meat-browsing, cookie-cutting koala?

Published by Robin and the Honey Badger at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Robin and the Honey Badger

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All content, trade names, and other distinguishing marks, plus cover design, are the intellectual property of Robin and the Honey Badger. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the authors.

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WAS THIS MARSUPIAL A LION – OR A POUCH-ROBBING, MEAT-BROWSING, COOKIE-CUTTING KOALA?

by Robin and the Honey Badger

In our determination to see a pouched felid, have we overlooked an even more gripping dentition?

The so-called marsupial lion [1] (see Figure 1) is the largest carnivorous marsupial known from the fossil record: a giant relative of koalas [2] that presumably ate giant relatives of wombats [3] and kangaroos in prehistoric Australia. This metatherian [4] or ‘non-placental mammal’, celebrated as the Antipodean answer to the sabre-tooth felids [5] of other continents, became extinct about 40 thousand years ago, when its large prey died out and the human species became the main predator in Australia. Although all carnivorous mammals on land have carnassial cheek-teeth [6] capable of snipping flesh when butchering a carcase, those of the marsupial lion were particularly impressive, being much larger, simpler and more prominent in the mouth than the carnassials of felids, canids [7], or bears. Indeed, the sheer length of its carnassial blades exceeded even that of the polar bear [8], an animal that weighs three-fold more than the marsupial lion did and eats whales by dissecting massive pieces of hide and blubber. But the marsupial lion differs from all other carnivorous mammals on land in lacking prominent canine teeth. Instead of