The brushtail possum asked the sugar glider, "Are we related?" For many years, science answered "No". For a long time, genetic data provided evidence that the australasiatic possums, the Phalangeroidea (including the brushtail possum) and Petauroidea (including the sugar glider), were divided into two phylogenetic branches without common ancestry.
But, the research group of Dr. Jürgen Schmitz and Dr. Liliya Doronina from the Institute of Experimental Pathology at the University of Münster recently found just the opposite. "Following our analyses of jumping genes, it is clear that all possums share a common ancestry" says Schmitz. ...
