marsupial

On an island just off the coast is one of the last surviving pockets of the world's rarest marsupial, the Gilbert's potoroo.

From BBC ● Aug. 8, 2026

Eluding us is the numbat, a rare Australian marsupial which could be the love-child of a chipmunk and an anteater.

From BBC ● Aug. 8, 2026

Dr. Churchill says this points to a distinct marsupial lineage that had not been recognized before.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 19, 2026

From those fragments, they worked to determine where the animals fit in the marsupial family tree.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 19, 2026

But there are certainly good reasons to believe that if Homo sapiens had never gone Down Under, it would still be home to marsupial lions, diprotodons and giant kangaroos.

From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari

Although phylogenetic trees often point to a single early group that later gave rise to modern Australian marsupials, the fossil evidence appears less tidy.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 19, 2026

The analysis showed that these three species lived alongside several other marsupials that scientists had already studied.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 19, 2026

The standard explanation is that marsupials reached Australia after traveling from South America through Antarctica, before the ancient supercontinent Gondwana split apart.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 19, 2026

Scientists may never be able to fully reconstruct the routes that early marsupials took as they spread and evolved.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 19, 2026

But Australia / New Guinea formerly had its own suite of diverse big mammals, including giant kangaroos, rhinolike marsupials called diprotodonts and reaching the size of a cow, and a marsupial “leopard.”

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond