Wombat marsupial

Wombat, (familia Vombatidae), cualquiera de las tres grandes especies terrestres de marsupiales australianos. Al igual que las marmotas, los wombats son madrigueras muy construidas y prácticamente sin cola con ojos pequeños y orejas cortas. Los wombats, sin embargo, son más grandes, miden 80 a 120 cm (31 a 47 pulgadas) de largo. Principalmente nocturnos y estrictamente herbívoros, comen hierbas y, en el caso del wombat común (Vombatus ursinus), la corteza interna de las raíces de los árboles y arbustos. Los granjeros consideran que los wombats son una plaga porque cavan en campos y pastos cultivados y porque sus madrigueras pueden albergar conejos.

marsupial

> wombats, y el koala (Phascolarctos cinereus), existen numerosas formas más pequeñas, muchas de las cuales son carnívoras, con la Tasmania

El wombat común tiene cabello oscuro grueso y una almohadilla nasal granular calva. Es común en los bosques del país montañoso a lo largo de la Cordillera Divisoria en el sureste de Australia, desde el sureste de Queensland a través de Nueva Gales del Sur y Victoria hasta el sur de Australia, y en Tasmania. En tiempos históricos, las formas enanas vivían en pequeñas islas en el estrecho de Bass, pero se han extinguido debido a la destrucción del hábitat por el pastoreo de ganado.

The hairy-nosed wombats (genus Lasiorhinus) are more sociable. They make a grassy nest at the end of a large underground burrow 30 metres (100 feet) long that is shared with several other wombats. They have silky fur and pointed ears, and the nose is entirely hairy, without a bald pad. The southern hairy-nosed wombat (L. latifrons) is smaller than the common wombat; it lives in semiarid country mainly in South Australia, extending through the Nullarbor Plain into the southeast of Western Australia. The very rare Queensland, or northern, hairy-nosed wombat (L. barnardi) is larger and differs in cranial details; it is protected by law, and most of the population lives within Epping Forest National Park in central Queensland, where there are only 60 to 80 remaining. Two other populations of hairy-nosed wombats became extinct in the late 19th or early 20th century, one near St. George in southwestern Queensland and the other at Deniliquin on the Murray River in New South Wales; these closely resembled the Queensland species.

The skull of the wombat is flattened, and its bones are extremely thick. Unlike other marsupials, wombats have continuously growing rootless teeth adapted to a hard-wearing diet. The two incisor teeth in each jaw are rodentlike; there are no canine teeth. Wombats almost invariably bear one young at a time, which develops for five months or longer in a pouch that opens rearward. They become sexually mature at two years of age in the common wombat and three in the hairy-nosed wombats.

Contemporary wombats are related to the extinct giant wombat (Diprotodon) of Australia, which has been acknowledged as the largest marsupial in history. Some paleontologists separate giant wombats into two species (D. australis and D. minor) on the basis of differences in skull size. Other paleontologists, however, maintain that these variations can be explained by sexual dimorphism (the differences in appearance between males and females of the same species) and thus place all giant wombats in the species D. opatum. The largest giant wombats stood 1.7 metres (about 5.6 feet) tall at the shoulder and averaged 3 metres (10 feet) in length. At 2,000–2,500 kg (approximately 4,400–5,500 pounds), males weighed more than twice as much as females. Although many scientists contend that humans killed off the last giant wombats between 46,000 and 15,000 years ago, some scientists attribute its extinction to the increase in Australia’s aridity that accompanied the most recent global ice age.