Australia's marsupials diversify
Isolation and drying push pouched mammals into carnivore, grazer, burrower and glider roles.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 11 million years
- Known to
- ± 2 million years
- Era
- Oligocene, Cenozoic
As Australia drifts north and its interior begins to dry, its marsupials radiate into an entire mammal fauna built on a different reproductive plan: diprotodonts as large browsers, thylacinids and dasyurids as predators, wombats as burrowers, and possums as arboreal generalists. The Riversleigh deposits later capture this fauna in extraordinary detail. Australia's placental mammals remain limited to bats and, much later, rodents — everything else is marsupial or monotreme.