Dasyurid
| Dasyuromorphia Temporal range: Late Oligocene–Recent |
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|---|---|
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| A tiger quoll | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Infraclass: | Marsupialia |
| Superorder: | Australidelphia |
| Order: |
Dasyuromorphia Gill, 1872 |
| Families | |
†Thylacinidae
Dasyuridae
Myrmecobiidae
†Malleodectidae
The order Dasyuromorphia (meaning "hairy tail") comprises most of the Australian carnivorous marsupials, including quolls, dunnarts, the numbat, the Tasmanian devil, and the thylacine. In Australia, the exceptions include the omnivorous bandicoots (order Peramelemorphia) and the marsupial moles (which eat meat but are very different and are now accorded an order of their own, Notoryctemorphia). Numerous South American species of marsupials (orders Didelphimorphia, Paucituberculata, and Microbiotheria) are also carnivorous.
There are four families: one with just a single living species (the numbat), two with only extinct species (including the thylacine and Malleodectes), and one, the Dasyuridae, with about 70 living members.
Unlike herbivores, which tend to become highly specialized for particular ecological niches and diversify greatly in form, carnivores tend to be broadly similar to one another, certainly on the level of gross external form. Just as Northern Hemisphere carnivores like cats, foxes and weasels are much more alike in structure than, for example, camels, goats, pigs and giraffes, so too are the marsupial predators constrained to retain general-purpose, look-alike forms—forms which mirror those of placental carnivores. The names given to them by early European settlers reflect this: the thylacine was called the Tasmanian tiger, quolls were called native cats, and so on.
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