Nimiokoala greystanesi is an extinct marsupial, closely related to the extant koala, that inhabited northwestern Queensland in the Early and Middle subepochs of the Miocene (23–16 million years ago). It is the only species assigned to the genus Nimiokoala. Along with species of sister genus Litokoala, it is the smallest representative of family Phascolarctidae. Based on cladistic analysis, Nimiokoala is one of the more basal genera of Phascolarctidae. It died out due to climate change rendering the environment more arid. It probably had a more generalized diet than that of the modern spec
Nimiokoala greystanesi is an extinct marsupial, closely related to the extant koala, that inhabited northwestern Queensland in the Early and Middle subepochs of the Miocene (23–16 million years ago). It is the only species assigned to the genus Nimiokoala. Along with species of sister genus Litokoala, it is the smallest representative of family Phascolarctidae. Based on cladistic analysis, Nimiokoala is one of the more basal genera of Phascolarctidae. It died out due to climate change rendering the environment more arid. It probably had a more generalized diet than that of the modern species, but its exact food preferences are unknown.
== Etymology == The generic name, Nimiokoala, is derived from the Latin word Nimio "excessive" referring to its complex molar morphology relative to other koala species. The specific name, greystanesi, honors Greystanes High School.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).