species was not recorded in the lists produced by the Austin Expedition of 1854, although W. A. Sanford was informed of a frequently seen animal, described as the "chestnut-eared hog's-foot", which Ludwig Glauert suggests was too common to merit notice in Austin's published report. Despite actively searching and collecting information on this animal, the species was not recorded by John Tunney, George Masters, or Guy Shortridge in their extensive surveys of western regions during the subsequent decades. The last record of Chaeropus in the Southwest Australian region was in 1898, at Youndegin, consistent with the disappearance of species in a critical weight range that succumbed to Australia's mammalian faunal collapse (1875–1925). Archaeological evidence of the genus shows a greater range during Holocene and the earlier Pleistocene epoch. Specimens were uncovered in the first examination of fossil deposits at Mammoth Cave (Western Australia), at the beginning of the twentieth century, and great extension of the known range to eastern Queensland at two sites examined a century later. The appearance in the fossil fauna of eastern Queensland sites demonstrates the replacement of rainforest communities with the open grassy habitat favoured by this genus during the later Pleistocene. A survey of mammal fauna in the northeast of South Australia uncovered a fragment in an owl pellet buried beneath sediments. Explorer Samuel Albert White was shown the tracks of the animal in 1921 and gained information on its habitat, being found on stony tablelands or at sand dunes in central Australia, and was able to capture one with the assistance of a local Aboriginal woman and her dogs. The increasing rarity of the animal had it included on a list of prohibited exports, either live or skin, issued by the federal government in 1921. Extinction According to Indigenous Australian oral tradition, pig-footed bandicoots were rare even before the arrival of Europeans on the continent, and were in a serious decline even as it first came to scientific notice in the middle years of the 19th century. Two specimens of pig-footed bandicoots were obtained by local people in 1857 for Gerard Krefft, who accompanied the Blandowski Expedition. In trying to communicate the species he sought, Krefft showed a drawing to his collectors that showed the absence of a tail; the first specimens he was supplied were bandicoots with the tails removed. Despite the trouble taken in gaining living specimens, Krefft recorded his observations with an