North American Recent Mammals 



Class MAMMALIA 



Subclass THERIA 



Infraclass METATHERIA 



Superorder DIDELPHIA 



Order MARSUPIALIA 



Suborder POLYPROTODONTIA 



Superfamily DIDELPHOIDEA 



Family Didelphiidae 



Genus DIDELPHIS 1 Linnaeus (opossums) 



1758. Didelphis Linnaeus, Systema naturae, ed. 10, vol. 1, p. 54. (Type, 

 Didelphis marsupialis Linnaeus.) 



Didelphis marsupialis virginiana Kerr* 



1792. Didelphis virginiana Kerr, The animal kingdom . . . , p. 193. 



1884. Didelphys virginiana True, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., vol. 7 ( App., Circ. 29) , 

 p. 587, Nov. 19, 1884. 



1951. [Didelphis marsupialis] virginiana Hershkovitz, Fieldiana-Zool., Chi- 

 cago Nat. Hist. Mus. Publ. 670, vol. 31, p. 550, July 10, 1951. 



Type Locality. — Virginia. Range. — From Lake Ontario, southern Michigan, 

 southern Wisconsin, and southcentral Minnesota (Swanson, Minnesota Dept. 

 Conserv. Techn. Bull. No. 2, p. 53, 1945) south to Georgia, Alabama, central 

 Mississippi, northern Louisiana, and Kerrville, Kerr County, and San Antonio, 

 Bexar County, Tex. (J. A. Allen, Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. 14, p. 162, 

 June 15, 1901) ; east sporadically to Massachusetts, southern Vermont, and 

 southern New Hampshire; a few definite records from southern Ontario (Essex, 

 Kent, and Middlesex Counties) but not definitely known to be established in 

 Canada (Anderson, Nat. Mus. Canada Bull. 102 (1946), p. 11, Jan. 24, 1947) ; 

 west to Baca County in southeastern Colorado and Tascosa, Oldham County, in 

 northwestern Texas (V. Bailey, North Amer. Fauna No. 53 (December 1931), 

 p. 7, Mar. 1,1932). 



Introductions: California (Grinnell, Univ. California Publ. Zool., vol. 40, 

 No. 2, p. 75, Sept. 26, 1933), Oregon (Jewett and Dobyns, Journ. Mamm., vol. 

 10, No. 4, p. 351, Nov. 11, 1929), and Skagit County, Wash. (Scheffer, Murrelet, 

 vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 27-28, Aug. 15, 1943) . 



1 Revised by J. A. Allen, Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. 14, pp. 149-188, June 15, 1901. 



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