Onirocuscus reidi

Beck, Robin M. D., Voss, Robert S. & Jansa, Sharon A., 2022, Craniodental Morphology And Phylogeny Of Marsupials, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2022 (457), pp. 1-353 : 333

† Onirocuscus

SPECIES SCORED: † Onirocuscus reidi (type species).

GEOLOGICAL PROVENANCE OF SCORED SPECIMENS: Riversleigh Faunal Zone C, Riversleigh World Heritage Area, Queensland, Australia.

AGE OF SCORED SPECIMENS: Riversleigh Faunal Zone C is interpreted to be middle Miocene based on biostratigraphy (see above). In the absence of radiometric dates, we have assumed the entire span of the middle Miocene (Langhian to Serravallian; Cohen et al., 2013 [updated]) for this terminal.

ASSIGNED AGE RANGE: 15.970 –11.630 Mya.

REMARKS: † Onirocuscus reidi was originally described as a fossil species of Strigocuscus by Flannery and Archer (1987c), who highlighted similarities with the ground cuscus Phalanger gymnotis (formerly also classified in the genus Strigocuscus sensu Flannery et al., 1987 ). However, based on evidence from a subsequently discovered and substantially complete cranium, Crosby (2007) referred reidi to a new genus, † Onirocuscus , which she placed in the phalangerid tribe Trichosurini . Crosby (2007) also described four other species of † Onirocuscus , but we did not use them for scoring purposes. Crosby’s (2007: fig. 7) phylogenetic hypothesis suggests that † Onirocuscus is closely related to “ Trichosurus ” † dicksoni , another fossil phalangerid from Riversleigh (see below). However, her phylogeny was not the result of analyzing a published data matrix and it endorsed some relationships—such as a basal position for Ailurops within Phalangeridae and Strigocuscus celebensis within Trichosurini (see also Crosby and Norris, 2003)—that are contradicted by recent molecular analyses (Ruedas and Morales, 2005; Raterman et al., 2006; Meredith et al., 2009b; Mitchell et al., 2014; Kealy et al., 2019).