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Maintained by pioweb@ucsc.edu. The common ancestor of placental mammals probably looked like Eomaia scansoria, the earliest known placental mammal, shown here in an artist's reconstruction based on a 125-million-year-old fossil skeleton found in China in 2002.aintained by pioweb@ucsc.edu. The common ancestor of placental mammals probably looked like Eomaia scansoria, the earliest known placental mammal, shown here in an artist's reconstruction based on a 125-million-year-old fossil skeleton found in China in 2002.
Except for the Virginia opossum, from North America, which is a metatherian, all mammals indigenous to Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America north of Mexico are eutherians. Extant eutherians, their last common ancestor, and all extinct descendants of that ancestor are members of Placentalia.