tion: Somehow marsupials reached Aus- 

 traha from South America and only man- 

 aged to hold the territory because Aus- 

 tralia broke free from east Antarctica (to 

 which it had been attached as part of 

 Gondwana), presumably moments before 

 the hordes of competitively superior pla- 

 centals came to a screeching halt at the 

 new, still-crumbhng continental edge. 



Unfortunately, recent discoveries pro- 

 vide little support for this view. In 1983, 

 Henk Godthelp and I filled three gunny 

 sacks with fifty-five-million-year-old clay 

 from the town of Murgon in Queensland. 

 When this clay was mud, Australia was 

 still part of Gondwana with land connec- 

 tions, via Antarctica and South America, 



to the Northern Hemisphere. After drying 

 and washing the clay in the lab, we found 

 to our delight Australia's oldest — by 

 twenty-five million years — marsupial, bat. 

 snake, frog, and bird bones. But the 

 biggest shock was a distinctive tooth that 

 resembled those of placental condylarths, 

 the group that gave rise to a wide variety 

 of placental orders on other continents in- 

 cluding South America. 



We concluded that marsupials and pla- 

 centals were both present in Australia be- 

 tween seventy and fifty-five million years 

 ago. But then, contrary to the expectations 

 of some paleontologists, the marsupials 

 ran the placentals out of town. 



We placentals should also recall that 



doe-eyed Australian kangaroos, intro- 

 duced last century to the remaining wild 

 places of England and Germany, have 

 since toughed out ferocious placental 

 competition and Europe's worst winters to 

 hoist the flag of "pouched and pendulous" 

 on those lands. Like eucalyptus and wattle 

 trees, these rampaging Australians have 

 done much to di.spel the myth that Aus- 

 tralia is a sanctuary of competitively infe- 

 rior bits of biological history. Marsupials 

 may seem unlikely contenders in the 

 world furry-weight title, but when it 

 comes to their going a round or two with 

 placentals, you should probably put at 

 least half your money in the pouch for 

 safekeeping. 



