Possums and Opossums: Studies in Evolution

788 p., illustrations, bibliography, index. 2-volume set, includes errata slip. These volumes represent a major turning point in our understanding of marsupial evolution. For the first time since Ride's review of 1964, the whole subject of the evolutionary relationships of marsupials is thoroughly overhauled. In the more than 50 contributions by 38 American and Australian authors, five new families and many new genera and species of American and Australian marsupials are described for the first time. Some of these descriptions represent the results of up to 15 years of collection, preparation and study. Many represent the "births" of extraordinarily distinctive types of marsupials that lived 55,000,000 years ago in Brazil, 15,000,000 years ago in the Miocene forests of what is now the Simpson Desert, approximately 15,000,000 years ago in dense rainforests of what are now the steamy limestone plateaus of north Queensland and 4,500,000 years ago in the cool wet rainforests of western Victoria. While some give us important clues about how modern faunas evolved, others represent bizarre experiments that faded from the world millions of years before Man evolved.…