Today I took my first lecture exam for Mammalogy. I learned all of the dietry, locomotive, physiological, and anatomical characteristics for Order Monotremta, Order Metatheria, and a portion of Order Eutheria. I learned that marsupials and eutherians differ in that eutherians have more specialized and diverse front limbs in comparisons to marsupials. Marsupials also have angular processes on their skulls that eutherians do not have. Many marsupails (Order Metatheria) are diprotodont, meaning they have two large, procumbent incisors on their lower jaw. These species are in Family Diprotodontia. Family Macropodidae and Vombatidae (kangaroos/wallabees and wombats, respectively) have diastema, a long distance between incisors and cheek teeth. Tasmanian devils, members of the Family Dasyuridae, are endangered due to a mouth cancer they can spread to one another due to the fact that most populations are very geneticallly similar.
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