The New Guinean feather-tailed possum, Distoechurus pennatus, never developed gliding. Credit: UNSW Sydney
Phys.org as a story about possums in New Guinea. A paper in Alcheringa : An Australasain Journal of Paleontology analyzed fossils from Riversleigh and found interesting facts about the ancestors of a tiny possum. Biologists have long known that miniature feather-tailed possums in Australia and the island of New Guinea are evolutionary cousins... they just didn't know how closely they were related until now.
Professor Mike Archer from UNSW's School of Biological Earth and Environmental Sciences says that in an analysis of extinct species found at Riversleigh World Heritage Area fossil deposits in north-western Queensland revealed that ancestors of both groups of possums were present in Australia by at least 25 million years ago.
"As Riversleigh started revealing its prehistoric treasures, we discovered four different species of feathertail possums, the first 'deep-time' fossil record known for the whole family," he says.
Lead author Prue Fabian was able to unravel the Riversleigh story about this extraordinary group of possums in her honors year. "Not much was known about these species in the fossil record and how they related to their modern-day descendants," she says.
"Not only did we find two new species related to the Australian feathertail gliders, the species of Acrobates, but more surprisingly, two new species related to the New Guinean modern-day feather-tailed possum, Distoechurus pennatus."
