Marsupial Families

This group gathers taxon/Mammal Families subcategory members that are themselves mammal families belonging to the marsupials, a distinct mammalian lineage whose young are born at a very early, embryonic stage of development and typically complete much of their growth attached to a nipple, often inside a protective pouch. It spans Macropodidae, the kangaroo and wallaby family, Australia's most recognizable marsupial group and named for its members' characteristically large hind feet, Didelphidae, the opossum family and the only marsupial family found in the Americas, and Dasyuridae, a largely carnivorous Australian and New Guinean family that includes the Tasmanian devil, alongside families such as Phalangeridae and Vombatidae, the possum and wombat families respectively. Every family gathered here diverged from the placental mammals gathered in every other group in this atlas extremely early in mammalian evolutionary history, a split reflected in reproductive biology unlike that of any placental family.