Hulitherium
Hulitherium tomasetti (meaning "Huli beast", after the Huli people) is an extinct zygomaturine marsupial from New Guinea during the Pleistocene. The species name honours Berard Tomasetti, a Catholic priest in Papua New Guinea, who brought the fossils to the attention of experts. Fossils. "Hulitherium" was described on the basis of a nearly complete skull, several detached teeth, a fragment of lower jaw, atlas and cervical vertebrae, almost complete humerus and fragmentary bones of the hind limb. The skeleton suggests that the limbs were highly mobile relative to the other diprotodontids and that it was a browser. Biology. "Hulitherium" lived  in montane rain forests was proposed in its initial description to have fed on bamboo. Perhaps a marsupial analogue of the giant panda. It was one of New Guinea's largest mammals, standing at 1 m (3 ft) tall, close to 2 m (6 ft) long, and with an estimated weight of . Flannery and Plane (1986) suggested that because little had changed since the Late Pleistocene, humans may have been the major factor that led to its extinction. The head of the femur lies directly above the shaft, which along with the morphology of the humerus-ulnar joint, suggests that  Hulitherium reared up on its hind legs to feed. Dental microwear results support that "Hulitherium" was a browser that fed on soft plant material, rather than on fibrous bamboo. Other relatives. Murray (1992) concluded that "Hulitherium" is most closely related to the New Guinean "Maokopia", and that these two together are most closely related to "Kolopsis rotundus" also from New Guinea. Black and Mackness (1999) suggested that the "Hulitherium" clade is more closely related to the clade comprising "Zygomaturus" plus another undescribed genus from Australia, than it is to "Kolopsis".