![]() ![]() Both convergence tests find significant levels of convergence between the thylacine and the African jackals and South American ‘foxes’, with lesser support for the coyote and red fox. ![]() The thylacine was found to group with predators that routinely take prey smaller than 45% of their own body mass, not with predators that take subequal-sized or larger prey. ![]() We find a correlation between cranial, facial, and neurocranial shape and the ratio of prey-to-predator body mass, though neurocranial shape may not correlate with prey size within marsupials. Using this dataset, we investigated patterns of correlation between cranial shape and diet, phylogeny, and relative prey size across these terrestrial faunivores. Here, we examined the cranium of the thylacine using 3D geometric morphometrics and two quantitative tests of convergence to more precisely determine convergent analogues, within a phylogenetically informed dataset of 56 comparative species across 12 families of marsupial and placental faunivorous mammals. This lack of data leads to questions regarding the degree of convergence with, and the similarity of, the functional ecology of the thylacine and the wolf/dog. The thylacine ( Thylacinus cynocephalus), the iconic recently extinct marsupial, is considered a classic example of convergent evolution with the distantly related placental wolf or dog, though almost nothing is actually known regarding its ecology. Morphological convergence is a fundamental aspect of evolution, allowing for inference of the biology and ecology of extinct species by comparison with the form and function of living species as analogues. ![]()
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