The description of this species, assigned to a new genus Hypsiprymnodon, was published in 1876 by Edward Pierson Ramsay, a curator at the Australian Museum.

[5] A description of the species was provided by Richard Owen in the year after Ramsay's publication, the name Pleopus nudicaudatus, describing the five toes of the hind foot and its scaly, naked tail, is now regarded as a synonym.

[10] The pelage is a uniform, deep and rich brown colour with reddish highlights over most of the body, the head and lower parts are somewhat greyish.

They are found in low altitude rainforests, such as Cape Tribulation and Mission Beach, and within the montane habitat of the Carbine, Atherton and Windsor tableland regions.

[8] Observations of the behaviour within its dense habitat presented difficulties to early field work, however, the use of a thread, lightly glued to the animal and fed from a spool, allowed the activity and range of males and females to be more accurately evaluated.

Males may venture out in a range from 0.8 to 4.2 hectares, while females are recorded foraging over a smaller sized area of up to 2.2 ha.

Their omnivorous diet comprises fruits and fungi along with some insects and other invertebrates, found among the leaf litter and lower storey of the rainforest.

[14] Aggressive behaviours between males may be displayed during the austral spring and summer months, vigorously pursuing each other for around 30 seconds.

[3] Regular activity is conducted on all four limbs, but unlike the bettongs and potoroos, the musky rat-kangaroo bounds using all its paws when moving rapidly.

[17] Musky rat-kangaroos have been protected from many of the threatening factors that greatly reduced the potoroine species, and their rainforest habitat has in part remain secluded and conserved.

The species remains vulnerable to fragmentation of the population by land clearing, which disrupts the ability to recolonise and increases genetic isolation, Their role in seed dispersal within their range is likewise important to the ecology of their tropical rainforest habitat.

[18] By carrying a fleshy fruit away to be consumed, or pressing them into earth as a cache, Hypsiprymnodon moschatus gives advantage to the plant's potential for recruitment.

Later revisions have strongly indicated deep divergence from the extant potoroid marsupials, Bettongia and Potorous, and separated at the family level as Hypsiprymnodontidae.