The pig-footed bandicoot was one of the very strangest of marsupials. The size of a kitten, it had long, slender limbs, the hind feet bearing a single, elongated toe like a tiny horses’ hoof, while the forefeet bore two digits resembling miniature cloven hoofs. As its limbs suggest, it had a peculiar gait, being likened by one nineteenth-century naturalist as akin to ‘a broken-down hack in a canter, apparently dragging the hindquarters after it’.

Pig-footed bandicoots were never common, although the species was rather widespread. They appear to have been principally vegetarian, taking grass seeds in the wild, although in captivity they ate lettuce, bulbs and grasshoppers, and according to one observer they drank a good deal of water. By day they sheltered in a grass nest, from which they emerged in the evening to feed. Twins may have been normal, with breed occurring between May and June.

Gerard Krefft, who collected eight specimens near the junction of the Murray and Darling rivers in 1857, took a drawing of a specimen with him to show to Aborigines, to help explain that this was the animal he was anxious to procure. Unfortunately the only drawing he could obtain was of a specimen that had lost its tail, and his Aboriginal helpers brought him any number of common bandicoots with their tails screwed out, before finally arriving with two living pig-footed bandicoots. Krefft, who was on short rations at the time, studied them for some time before he was forced to kill them. He recorded that ‘they are very good eating, and I am sorry to say that my appetite more than once overruled my love for science; but 24 hours upon "pig face" (Mesembryanthemum) will damp the ardour of any naturalist.’

The Australian nation came into existence through federation in 1901, the same year that the last pig-footed bandicoot specimen was secured. Interviews with Aborigines living in remote regions, however, suggest that the species survived long after this, finally becoming extinct in the western desert as late as the 1950s. Just which factors, such as the introduction of foxes, cattle, sheep, cats or changed fire regime was responsible for the extinction of this strange creature remains unclear.