In the continental United States, there’s only one native marsupial – the Virginia opossum. The title’s a bit of a misnomer. Opossums aren’t just restricted to the “Mother of Presidents.” They raid garbage cans and scurry across streets up and down the entirety of the east coast and the west, really only becoming scarce in deserts and badlands. This resourcefulness truly makes them the American opossum, and they’re an echo of a prehistoric time when their kin used to be quite common around here.

North America used to be a hotspot for archaic marsupials and their pouched relatives. Over 66 million years ago, when the likes of Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops were still stomping around, ancestral marsupials and their closest relatives –