I went to an absolutely excellent UCL Lunch Hour Lecture by a
good friend of the Museum, Dr Anjali Goswami about how the way
marsupials reproduce has impacted on their evolution. In any
case, it’s my professional opinion that they are the best group
of animals to have ever lived (take that dinosaurs). The write-
up of what she said, and the video of the whole lecture is on
the UCL Events blog. It begins… Every zoologist has their own
favourite group of animals, and mine is marsupials. However,
this group sometimes suffer a lot of stick from the more common
type of zoologist who studies placental mammals. They say
marsupials are boring, stupid, primitive, too few in number and
are altogether inferior to “normal” mammals. I was hoping that
the lunch hour lecture by Anjali Goswami (UCL Genetics,
Evolution and the Environment and UCL Earth Sciences) would set
some of these accusations straight. Whenever I go to Australia
to undertake ecological fieldwork I am struck with the diversity
of the mammals there. You can