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Updated: May 24, 2025
Therefore wo must suppose either that all rodents, including the vizcacha, branched off from some ancient marsupial, which will naturally have been more or less intermediate in character with respect to all existing marsupials; or, that both lodents and marsupials branched off from a common progenitor. ... On either view we must suppose that the vizcacha has retained, by inheritance, more of the characters of its ancient progenitor than have other rodents."
The two thousand four hundred and seventy-eight clean beasts, oxen, elk, giraffes, camels, deer, antelope, sheep, goats, with the horses, zebras, asses, hippopotami, rodents, and marsupials could not have required less than four thousand five hundred tons; making a total of five thousand eight hundred and fifty tons.
These primitive mammals help us to reconstruct the mammal life of the Mesozoic Epoch. The bones that we have are variously described in geological manuals as the remains of Monotremes, Marsupials, and Insectivores. On the other hand, the lower jaw of the Marsupial is characterised by a peculiar hooklike process, and this is commonly found in Mesozoic jaws.
Only one bird of passage migrates across the intervening sea. The strange marsupials, the snakes, the great running birds, the wild dogs of Australia, have no counterpart in New Zealand. The climate of Australia, south of Capricorn, is, except on the eastern and south-eastern coast, as hot and dry as the South African.
The reptiles are worse than useless, and the marsupials are not much better. Birds again, except parrots, are not very beneficial; he may look at them now and again, but with the elephants and the pig tribe generally he should mix just now as freely as possible. "Then, you know, to prevent monotony I should send him, say, to morning service at the Abbey before he goes.
"An adorable creature," he called it. But the most interesting event of the day, by far, was the kangaroo hunt. About four o'clock, the dogs roused a troop of these curious marsupials. The little ones retreated precipitately into the maternal pouch, and all the troop decamped in file. Nothing could be more astonishing than the enormous bounds of the kangaroo.
While the majority had the character of insectivorous marsupials, Dr. Falconer selected one as differing widely from the rest, and pointed out that in certain characters it was allied to the living Kangaroo-rat, or Hypsiprymnus, ten species of which now inhabit the prairies and scrub-jungle of Australia, feeding on plants, and gnawing scratched-up roots.
On the other hand, of all Marsupials, as Mr. Waterhouse has remarked, the phascolomys resembles most nearly, not any one species, but the general order of Rodents. In this case, however, it may be strongly suspected that the resemblance is only analogical, owing to the phascolomys having become adapted to habits like those of a Rodent.
However, what we do know of this Upper Eocene Fauna of Europe gives sufficient positive information to enable us to draw some tolerably safe inferences. It has yielded representatives of Insectivora, of Cheiroptera, of Rodentia, of Carnivora, of artiodactyle and perissodactyle Ungulata, and of opossum-like Marsupials.
There are many comic opportunities in the kangaroo particularly in the pouch. Let the showman see to it. The most entirely objectionable of all the marsupials is the Tasmanian devil. It is only a little devil, a couple of feet or so long, but its savagery is beyond measuring by anything like a two-foot rule.
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