section_path: Taxonomic and evolutionary history/Evolution
section_name: Evolution
paragraph_text: Evolution
  
  The earliest records of the modern thylacine are from the Early Pleistocene, with the oldest known fossil record in southeastern Australia from the Calabrian age around 1.77–0.78 million years ago. Specimens from the Pliocene -aged Chinchilla Fauna, described as Thylacinus rostralis by Charles De Vis in 1894, have in the past been suggested to represent Thylacinus cynocephalus, but have been shown to either have been curatorial errors, or ambiguous in their specific attribution. The family Thylacinidae includes at least 12 species in eight genera. Thylacinids are estimated to have split from other members of Dasyuromorphia around 42–36 million years ago. The earliest representative of the family is Badjcinus turnbulli from the Late Oligocene of Riversleigh in Queensland, around 25 million years ago. Early thylacinids were quoll -sized, well under 10 kg (22 lb). It probably ate insects and small reptiles and mammals, although signs of an increasingly-carnivorous diet can be seen as early as the early Miocene in Wabulacinus. Members of the genus Thylacinus are notable for a dramatic increase in both the expression of carnivorous dental traits and in size, with the largest species, Thylacinus potens and Thylacinus megiriani, both approaching the size of a wolf. In late Pleistocene and early Holocene times, the modern thylacine was widespread (although never numerous) throughout Australia and New Guinea.
  
  A classic example of convergent evolution, the thylacine showed many similarities to the members of the dog family, Canidae, of the Northern Hemisphere: sharp teeth, powerful jaws, raised heels, and the same general body form. Since the thylacine filled the same ecological niche in Australia and New Guinea as canids did elsewhere, it developed many of the same features. Despite this, as a marsupial, it is unrelated to any of the Northern Hemisphere placental mammal predators.
  
  The thylacine is a basal member of the Dasyuromorphia, along with numbats, dunnarts, wambengers, and quolls. The cladogram follows:
  
  Phylogeny of Thylacinidae after Rovinsky et al. (2019)