Tingamarra

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Despite the fact that only a single tooth (and possibly a few nearby bones) have been found, Tingamarra was a remarkable discovery made in Australia. Today we assume that marsupials are ill-equipped to adapt to a world dominated by placental mammals. This assumption could be made from the extinction of the thylacine after the introduction of the dingo to Australia. But in the 1980s, Tingamarra was discovered from partial remains dating back 55 million years ago. It turns out that Tingamarra was a terrestrial placental mammal. At the same time, marsupials invaded north into Australia from Antarctica. Possibly the ancestors of Tingamarra followed the same beaten path, but did not achieve a foothold in the major Australian fauna. The reason for this remains unknown.

Tingamarra probably belongs to the condylarth order: this is a primitive order of mammals which are ancestral to modern ungulates.

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