marsupial

Land clearing and urbanisation are leaving the marsupials hungry and homeless, while natural disasters are drowning or cooking them en masse.

In recent years, scientists have aimed to clone the Tasmanian tiger or thylacine, an extinct marsupial.

There are also jobs for truffle hunters, "wine whisperers" and wombat walkers willing to take the marsupials "on their morning waddle".

Large marsupials like kangaroos and wallabies tended to avoid burrows, unless they had been flooded with rainwater; then they used them as watering holes.

The reverse trek was made by four different kinds of ground sloths, oversized armadillos, terror birds, capybaras and even a marsupial.