Yalkaparidon

†Yalkaparidon coheni
†Yalkaparidon jonesi

Thingodonta is the colloquial name given to an order of extinct Australian marsupials, first described in 1988 and known only from the Oligo-Miocene deposits of Riversleigh, northwestern Queensland, Australia.

A single genus, Yalkaparidon (from an aboriginal word for boomerang, alluding to the boomerang shape of its molars when seen in occlusal view, and the Greek word for tooth) and two species, Y. coheni and Y. jonesi, have so far been described. Numerous isolated teeth and jaw bones of Yalkaparidon are known, but only a single skull (of Y. coheni) has so far been recovered.

These specimens of Yalkaparidon exhibit a melange of characters: the molars are zalambdodont (a distinctive tooth type also found in the marsupial mole Notoryctes, the living placental 'insectivores' Solenodon, tenrecs and golden moles, as well as a number of fossil groups); the incisors are very large and hypselodont (open-rooted and hence ever-growing, similar to those of rodents); the basicranial region of the only known skull is very primitive, somewhat similar to those of plesiomorphic bandicoots. The zalambdodont molars appear to link it to notoryctid marsupial moles, but detailed study of the teeth of these two groups suggests that they have evolved independently, and Yalkaparidon is anatomically otherwise very different from the marsupial moles. The incisors resemble those of diprotodontians, but no other features convincingly support this relationship, and the convergent evolution of such incisors in South American 'pseudodiprotodont' groups (such as caenolestids and polydolopimorphians) suggests that Yalkaparidon and diprotodontians may have evolved similar incisors independently. Basicranial similarities to bandicoots most likely represent shared plesiomorphic characters, and hence are not indicative of a close relationship.