| Abstract from DBPedia | Marsupials are any members of the mammalian infraclass Marsupialia. All extant marsupials are endemic to Australasia, Wallacea and the Americas. A distinctive characteristic common to most of these species is that the young are carried in a pouch. Marsupials include opossums, Tasmanian devils, kangaroos, koalas, wombats, wallabies, bandicoots, and the extinct thylacine. Marsupials represent the clade originating from the last common ancestor of extant metatherians, the group containing all mammals more closely related to marsupials than to placentals. They give birth to relatively undeveloped young that often reside in a pouch located on their mothers' abdomen for a certain amount of time. Close to 70% of the 334 extant species occur on the Australian continent (the mainland, Tasmania, New Guinea and nearby islands). The remaining 30% are found in the Americas—primarily in South America, thirteen in Central America, and one species, the Virginia opossum, in North America, north of Mexico. The word marsupial comes from marsupium, the technical term for the abdominal pouch. It, in turn, is borrowed from the Latin marsupium and ultimately from the ancient Greek μάρσιππος mársippos, meaning "pouch".有袋類（ゆうたいるい、Marsupialia）は、哺乳綱獣亜綱後獣下綱の1グループ。階級は有袋上目とすることが多い。 かつては有袋目（フクロネズミ目）の1目が置かれていた。しかし、哺乳類の歴史において有袋類の適応放散は有胎盤類の適応放散と同等のものであり、有胎盤類と同様にいくつかの目に分けるべきだという主張が強くなった。1990年ごろからは2大目7目とする分類が主流である。有袋類全体は有袋上目などになるが、フクロネズミ上目とは言わない。 後獣下綱唯一の現生群であり、現生群のみを問題にするときは後獣下綱のシノニムのようにあつかうことがある。 (Source: http://dbpedia.org/resource/Marsupial) |
