Allqokirus australis, Marshall & de Muizon, 1988

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 : 312

† Allqokirus

SPECIES SCORED: † Allqokirus australis (type and only described species).

GEOLOGICAL PROVENANCE OF SCORED SPECIMENS: Tiupampa, Santa Lucía Formation, Bolivia.

AGE OF SCORED SPECIMENS: Early or middle Paleocene (see † Pucadelphys above).

ASSIGNED AGE RANGE: 65.118 –59.200 Mya.

REMARKS: † Allqokirus australis is another metatherian from Tiupampa that is known from relatively complete cranial material, specifically specimen MNHC 8267, a well-preserved but partially disarticulated cranium and associated left and right mandibles of a subadult individual (P3/p3 and M4/m4 are not fully erupted; Muizon et al., 2018). Part of MNHC 8267 was illustrated by Cifelli and Muizon (1998a: fig. 2G, H), who identified it as † Mayulestes ferox , but subsequently the entire specimen was described in detail as † Allqokirus australis by Muizon et al. (2018). Based on its known morphology, † Allqokirus appears to be an early member of † Sparassodonta (Muizon et al., 2018) . We follow Muizon et al. (2018) in placing it in the sparassodont family † Mayulestidae . As discussed (see † Mayulestes , above), † Sparassodonta has been consistently recovered outside Marsupialia in published phylogenetic analyses.