Nature of Australia 1. A Separate Creation (11 of 17)

Nature of Australia

(THUNDER RUMBLES) Other pouched hunters were more wolf-like.
The last thylacines were still marauding through the forests of Tasmania until 50 years ago.
Unlike the marsupial lions, with their swift pounce, the thylacines wore their quarry down in dogged pursuit.
(THYLACINE SNARLS) Once there was a whole range of these marsupial wolves, as there was of this fearsome-Iooking creature.
(Devil growls) The Tasmanian devil is the sole relic of a large company of beasts that fed almost exclusively on carrion.
(Devils snarl) The devils hark back to Australia's golden age of marsupials.
15 millions years ago, their ancestors feasted on a vast array of marsupial flesh, from bandicoots to the many animals which evolved to feed on plants.

The earliest plant-eaters lived up in the trees.
The ancestors of possums and this spotted cuscus, which still inhabits the Northern forests.
The cuscuses remain aloft, but some of their distant forebears ventured to the ground.
And from those primitive possums emerged the most distinctive marsupial of all - the kangaroo.
How the first move out of the trees might have happened is revealed by the brush-tailed possum.
It feeds in the canopy, but it also browses on the forest floor.
To keep its balance on the branches, it moves with a bounding gait.
And here may well be the genesis of the kangaroo hop.