Thylacinus potens ("powerful pouched dog") was the largest species of the family Thylacinidae, originally known from a single poorly preserved fossil discovered by Michael O. Woodburne in 1967 in a Late Miocene locality near Alice Springs, Northern Territory.

Its size is estimated to be similar to that of a grey wolf; the head and body together were around 5 feet long, and its teeth were less adapted for shearing compared to those of the now-extinct thylacine.

[2] The description of the species was published in 1967, the author Michael O. Woodburne distinguishing the new thylacine with the epithet potens for what he interpreted as a "powerful" predator.

[5] An examination of tooth wear that suggests durophagy, probably bone-cracking behaviour, is interpreted as an evolutionary recent practice, to which the dentition was only partially suited, or a consequence of the ecological circumstances that created the mass assemblage of fossils at the same site.

The modern thylacine was not recorded as cracking bones as part of its regular feeding habits, but known as a consumer of carrion, and the individual T. potens may have encountered a mass death during a period of drought in the sub-tropical Alcoota region.