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It’s time for another look at Mount Erebus (and here is the Global Volcanism Program’s latest report).

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Aaah, volcanoes and the rainforest —

— no, really. The root system is still there:

And so are the volcanoes.

We won’t be wandering through that fire-lit green land any time soon, but many animals knew it back in times when Antarctica was much bigger (because Australia, India, and the tip of South America were still connected to it).

This was long before the famous “Age of Mammals” that began after the K/T extinction, but some mammals were around in the underbrush back then, keeping out of T. rex’s way.

Many of these were pouched marsupials, just as they still are in Australia and for a long time were in South America.

If surviving fossil records in North America are representative, here, too, marsupials ruled — until the K/T extinction.

“Our kind” (placental mammals) were the main survivors, at least in North America.

It wasn’t until North and South America hooked up a little over two million years ago that placental and marsupial mammals once more met face to face — a process that only began recently in Australia.

Antarctica used to be a good bridge between the two marsupial worlds:

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Lagniappe:

Of course one result of that heritage was a marsupial sabertooth!

Not a cat. Saberteeth developed multiple times before Family Felidae started using them.

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Featured image: Denis Mustafin/Shutterstock (Okay, this is Etna — the shorts made it fit this post!)

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