A new genus of polydolopid marsupial from Antarctica

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Abstract
Eurydolops seymourensis is a new genus and species of polydolopid marsupial found in strata of late Eocene age on Seymour Island, Antarctic Peninsula. It may be the sister taxon of Antarctodolops dailyi, also recovered from the same deposits. The new species, known only from an isolated upper premolar, is much smaller and differently specialized than A. dailyi. Both of these Antarctic species differ from South American forms and suggest that regional differentiation had taken place with respect to the marsupial faunas of South America and peninsular Antarctica by late Eocene time. The time of greatest potential dispersal by land mammals between South America and Antarctica in the Tertiary Period may have been about late Paleocene, ca. 60 Ma, after which the Seymour Island stocks underwent endemic evolution, with later, and apparently terminal, representatives being preserved in the La Meseta Formation at about 40 Ma. During the Late Cretaceous-late Eocene interval it is likely that only marsupials composed the land mammal population of the Antarctic region, which, by reason of their adaptation to an arboreal habitus, were favored over placental mammals for dispersal (especially in the Late Cretaceous) between South America and Australia through forests dominated by Nothofagus.

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