Reconstruction of the 25-million-year-old marsupial ecosystem Illustration courtesy of Peter Schouten
A mini koala meandered through central Australia about 25 million years ago. The newly discovered species belonged to a community that contained the oldest known members of the koala family and it could provide crucial missing information on the mysterious early evolution of marsupials.
The novel species which has been named Lumakoala blackae is represented by just by a dozen ancient teeth, mostly upper molars, found in fossil-bearing rocks near Alice Springs.
Teeth are good because they provide a huge amount of evolutionary and dietary information, says
