Marsupials

The sex life of a tiny Australian marsupial known as an antechinus is already pretty bizarre. But now its mating season has gotten even stranger – and darker – thanks to the introduction of cannibalism, as observed by field researchers.The great majority of these small marsupials live along the Great Dividing Range on the eastern coast of Australia. There are 15 different species of antechinus, with most living in hollow trees and resembling mice. What truly sets them apart from many other rodents and marsupials though,…

Once thought as the least evolved of the mammals that roam our world, new research shows that marsupial evolution might actually be further along than even humans. This old bias towards the creatures comes from many seeing them as the intermediate stage between egg-layers and placental mammals. However, as it turns out, marsupials have evolved more than any other mammal from their ancestral form. This discovery is outlined in a new paper published in Current Biology. The researchers look at the developmental…

A new study challenges the idea that marsupials are more 'primitive' than mammals by showing their development has changed more than mammals since they last shared an ancestor."For a long time, people have treated marsupials as 'lesser mammals,' which represent the intermediate stage between placental mammals and egg-layers," explains evolutionary biologist Anjali Goswami from the Natural History Museum in the UK."It turns out that marsupials are the ones that are far more evolved from the ancestral form."This now…

With two massive canines, an L-shaped jaw, and a pouch to carry its young, the saber-toothed marsupial Thylacosmilus atrox sounds like an evolutionary Madlib. But researchers have now described an extra quirk: surprisingly wide-set eyes, more typical of horses and cows than carnivorous animals.The finding makes the predator an even more intriguing specimen, raising questions about how evolution engineers predators and why the South American marsupial evolved such an uncommon ocular layout. The team’s findings are…

The last known thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus, or Tasmanian tiger) died in Hobart’s Beaumaris Zoo in 1936. Now, a genetic engineering company that last year announced plans to put thousands of woolly mammoths back on the Siberian steppe has added the lost marsupial wolf to its de-extinction docket.The company’s name is Colossal, and its declared aim is to bring back species wiped off the face of the planet by things like climate change (the mammoths) and humankind (the thylacine). These days, those two threats go…