[7] The lesser bilby was a medium-sized marsupial with a body mass of 300–435 grams, a combined head-body length of 200–270 millimetres and tail from 120 to 170 mm.

The overall coloration of this species was more subdued than the bilby, Macrotis lagotis, and smaller in size; the shorter ears of M. leucura measured 63 mm from base to tip.

Hedley Finlayson wrote that this animal was "fierce and intractable, and repulsed the most tactful attempts to handle them by repeated savage snapping bites and harsh hissing sounds".

A collector in the northern territory reported the name used by his Aboriginal informants, Urpila, that distinguished this species from M. lagotis (Urgata), and noted their particular habits.

A single specimen collected to the north of Charlotte Waters was deposited at the museum in Melbourne and examined by Baldwin Spencer in 1897, not recognizing it as this species.

[4] The last specimen ever found was a skull picked up below a wedge-tailed eagle's nest in 1967 at Steele Gap in the Simpson Desert, Northern Territory.

However, Jane Thornback and Martin Jenkins suggested in their book that the vegetation in the main part of its range remained intact, with little evidence of cattle or rabbit grazing and point to cats and foxes as the most likely cause of the extinction of the lesser bilby.