American and Australasian Marsupials: An Introduction

Abstract

This chapter introduces the book by telling how the history of research on American and Australasian marsupials has developed up to now. It focuses on the main disciplines that aim to study the diversity of marsupials and other metatherians, from the past to today. These disciplines are taxonomy, systematics, biogeography, ecology, and conservation. Through these lines the reader will meet some of the key researchers in these disciplines and discover how they led to fantastic discoveries of marsupials in different continents. Later, a brief introduction to the evolution and diversification of marsupials in the Ameriand Australasia is provided.