This is a

CBS I in the world. I'm John Bachelor with Professor Daniel Clode. Her new book is

koala, a natural history and an uncertain future. This is a marsupial and there are many different kinds of marsupials.

There's a family tree. Kowal is all by itself. It's phylogetically sterile. See? I learned learned it professor what does that mean?

That's an interesting phrase. I mean the idea is that they're the they're the

last of their line so a little bit like humans we used to have a whole

people of other relatives in the Homo family or the Homo group of species but we're

the last ones left doing it in the Neandero group of species but we're the last ones left and the neandotols have tied out lots of other

homo species have died out as well and koalas are in the same camp. So they had lots of other cousins around them at one

point, but now there's only one species left. So it's a sort of the end of the line for them.

Once upon a time.

Unless we...

So go ahead.

Oh no, unless we happen to speceate and split into two.

I don't know how that might happen like.

Not till we get to Mars, Daniel.

Once upon a time, the wombats were as big as grizzly bears.

Were koalas much bigger at that scale once upon a time?

Yeah, so that was one of the really interesting things I found when I was doing my research was that you know there's a lot of debate.

People love finding giant versions of animals and in the megaphonal period,

the last Ice Age, which you'll be familiar with from the woolly mammoths and the, you know,

giant sloths and those sorts of things Australia didn't have those

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