Definition of "marsupialia" []

• An order of the class Mammalia, coextensive with the subclass Didelphia, containing implacental mammals usually provided with a marsupium or pouch for the reception and nourishment of the young; the marsupials or pouched animals.

The Century Dictionary (Public Domain)

• "From reptiles we advance to birds, and thence to mammalia, which are commenced by marsupialia, acknowledgedly low forms in their class."
• "As these moral instincts have displaced the former instincts of the animal predecessors of man -- say, _e. g._, of sharks, of marsupialia, of lemurides -- so they must {380} also expect it any time to be displaced in turn by new and still more useful instincts."
• "Out of the fish he concludes that the amphibia were developed, and out of those the reptilia, out of one of them the marsupialia, and from them the lemurs or half-apes, the representatives of which yet live in Madagascar and the southern part of Asia."