World record possum

Shockingly large extinct possum uncovered in Texas




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Around 60 million years ago, a large species of Swaindelphys—extinct marsupial-like animals—roamed through modern-day Texas’ Big Bend National Park. While they were only about the size of a hedgehog, the now-extinct species
Swaindelphys solastella
were “gigantic” in comparison to similar Swaindelphys from the same time period, according to researchers from the University of Kansas (KU).

In a study recently published in the
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology,
the paleontologists  describe the recently discovered species based on previously-excavated fossils. Kristen Miller, lead author of the study and a doctoral student at KU’s Biodiversity Institute, analyzed the Texan fossils to investigate what kind of metatherians—a group including marsupials and their extinct cousins—they’d belonged to. 

“Not only are they [
Swaindelphys solastella
] the largest metatherians from this time period, but they’re also the youngest and located at the most southern latitude,” Miller said in the statement, which describe

Animal Control World Record?! (Possum-palooza)


A Day In The Life…

Here’s an entertaining story from my book, I Have A Complex, But I’m Managing It!. It would seem that the Fort Worth property manager who submitted this tale experienced several close encounters of the “marsupial-kind”. Or, as she called it— Possum-palooza!

Possum-palooza-

A resident called the leasing office one morning in a panic. “Help!” she cried. “There’s a possum outside my front door, and I can’t get out! I’m trapped in here and I’m already running late for work!”

“Don’t worry,” I calmly replied. “Maintenance will be there in few minutes to run him off so you can leave.” After alerting our maintenance guy, I called animal control. As leaned back in my chair, I thought, It’s shaping up to be one of those days.

It wasn’t the first time one of our residents had experienced a brush with wildlife, but the funny thing was, we’d already caught one possum earlier that morning. In fact, the animal was still locked in a trap at the back of our office, waiting for animal control to come and retrieve it. I figured they could pick that critter up when they came to set another trap for its cousin.

Three Guys


Odds are you’ve never seen a possum of these proportions. The giant critter that Dan Antilla shot on November 10 just outside of his home in Linwood, Minnesota looks like a real-life R.O.U.S, or Rodent of Unusual Size

, from
The Princess Bride
—though opossums are not actually rodents but marsupials

. Technicalities aside, the nocturnal creature had been breaking into and stealing eggs from Antilla’s chicken coop for several weeks before he laid eyes on it.

“I thought it was a fox, but it was weird that the chickens weren’t disappearing,” Antilla tells F&S, noting that he was finding large holes in the fencing. “I was getting so mad that the chickens kept getting out and up onto my patio and pooping on it. I finally went and wrapped a new set of chicken wire around the bottom of the coop.”

As the sun was about to set later that day, the egg thief returned and tried to find a new way into the coop. The possum had normally raided the coop during the night when it was too dark to see, but this time, there was still plenty of daylight for Antilla’s wife to spot it. “She was yelling to me ‘there’s a huge possum out here! Get rid of it,’” he says. “I ran and grabbed my .22. I




Recently, University of Kansas paleontologists discovered a fossil of what they think is a “near-marsupial.”
1
It is called
Swaindelphys
and was found in Big Bend National Park, Texas. Conventional scientists interpret
Swaindelphys
as a large extinct possum.

The two researchers involved in this discovery stated in the
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology
,

Here, we describe a new species of metatherian [marsupial],
Swaindelphys solastella
sp. nov., from the Tiffanian Ray’s Bonebed locality. The new taxon is the largest species of metatherian yet discovered from the Paleocene, being comparable in size to the Wasatchian peradectid [small metatherian mammal]
Mimoperadectes
.
2


What was the origin of the metatherians? “Metatherians are a clade of boreosphendian mammals that
must have
originated by the Late Jurassic [emphasis added].”
3
Evolutionists are not sure of their evolutionary history but believe they
may
have originated in the northern area (Amazonia) of South America.
4


However, the fossil record shows that possums (which are marsupials and not near-marsupials) have always been possums. In fact, possums have been called living fossils, and for