Encyclopedia of Life · EOL (see source)
Sarcophilus
Sign in to saveSarcophilus, from Ancient Greek σάρξ (sárx), meaning "flesh", and φίλος (phílos), meaning "loving", is a genus of carnivorous marsupial best known for its only living member, the Tasmanian devil.
Species
GENUS
- KingdomAnimalia
- PhylumChordata
- ClassMammalia
- OrderDasyuromorphia
- FamilyDasyuridae
Sarcophilus es un género de marsupiales dasiuromorfos de la familia de los dasiúridos. Se conocen cuatro especies, de las cuales sólo una, el demonio de Tasmania, sobrevive en nuestros días. Son de dieta carnívora.
via GBIF
Museum specimens
- Specimen records
- 83
- With media
- 2
- Family
- Dasyuridae
- Collections
- UCMP, NHMUK, UMZC
- Recorded in
- Australia, United States
~1 min read
Encyclopedic overview
1 sectionsContents
- References
Sarcophilus, from Ancient Greek σάρξ (sárx), meaning "flesh", and φίλος (phílos), meaning "loving", is a genus of carnivorous marsupial best known for its only living member, the Tasmanian devil.
There are four species of Sarcophilus. S. laniarius and S. moornaensis are only known from fossils from the Pleistocene. S. laniarius was larger than the contemporary, and only surviving, species S. harrisii, weighing up to 10 kilograms more. The relationship between the four species is unclear; while some have proposed that S. harrisii may be a dwarf version of S. laniarius, others argue that it is a completely different species and that the two may have coexisted during the Pleistocene.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Sarcophilus” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.