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Author Topic:   How did the Aborigines get to Australia?
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1015 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 55 of 226 (646343)
01-04-2012 10:52 AM
Reply to: Message 25 by Dr Adequate
01-01-2012 1:12 AM


Australian placentals
If you wish to suggest that the Australian fauna crossed a land bridge from Asia to Australia after the flood, then you have to explain (a) why no placental mammals went with them
Just a small correction, but some placentals did go to Australia. Whilst there are no big placentals knocking about, Australia has a rich collection of native rodents and bats. Collectively, they make up more than a quarter of the species of native Australian mammal.

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caffeine
Member (Idle past 1015 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 67 of 226 (647740)
01-11-2012 4:27 AM
Reply to: Message 66 by Portillo
01-11-2012 3:57 AM


Re: Public vs Scientific Controversy
It seems like there is an agreement that the marsupials got to Australia from other countries.
Well, that depends on what you mean. Kangaroos and wallabies, the topic of your original inquiry, didn't get to Australia from elsewhere. Kangaroos and wallabies have only ever lived in Australia and the surrounding islands (until humans began moving them about in the last few hundred years). This is what Granny was wondering if you had a problem with.

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caffeine
Member (Idle past 1015 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 70 of 226 (647744)
01-11-2012 4:41 AM
Reply to: Message 68 by Larni
01-11-2012 4:31 AM


Australian placentals again
Then how do you account for there being no native placental mammals in Australia?
There are. Although Australia's placental mammal population seemed to be extinct by about 30 million years ago*, the continent was repopulated by bats and rodents over the last 15 million years.
*Which is something to consider next time someone trots out the tired old 'placentals are better than marsupials so drive marsupials to extinction when they coexist' line. Both coexisted in Australia, and there the marsupials won.

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caffeine
Member (Idle past 1015 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 76 of 226 (647788)
01-11-2012 10:17 AM
Reply to: Message 73 by Percy
01-11-2012 9:21 AM


Re: Public vs Scientific Controversy
I've been assuming the Australian marsupials have always been native to Australia. Wither Australia went, so went they.
The original Australian marsupial is believed to have gotten there after Australia was already a seperate continent. Australian marsupials form a clade which probably originated from one dispersal event from Antarctica.
I'm a bit confused about all this now, though. An article on the origins of Australia's marsupials that I found while checking this contradicts what I said earlier about the marsupials out-competing placentals. It claims that Tingamarra is the only identified placental from Palaeogene Australia, and that it's been disputed whether it's actually a placental. I may have been wrong about that bit.
Edited by caffeine, : Broken tags. And of course this post is pretty irrelevant, having been substantially ninja'd

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