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There’s no question that fossils can teach us about the past, but a recent discovery in Australia has proved remarkable. A team of researchers from the University of New South Wales has found a 15-million-year-old fossil limestone cave packed with even older animal bones. The bones have revealed the entire life cycle of a large prehistoric marsupial, from babies still in their mother’s pouch to elderly adults.

The scientists uncovered hundreds of beautifully preserved fossils of an extinct browsing wombat-like marsupial they named Nimbadon lavarackorum, along with the remains of galloping kangaroos, primitive bandicoots, a fox-sized thylacine (also called Tasmanian tigers) and forest bats.

By comparing the bones of 26 different Nimbadon individuals that died in the cave at varying stages of life, the team has been able to show that the babies developed in much the same way as marsupials today, probably being born after only a month's gestation and crawling to the mother's pouch to complete their development.

The animals appear to have plunged to their deaths through a vertical cave entrance that was probably hidden by plants and acted as a natural pit-fall trap. The animals either unwittingly fell to their deaths or survived the fall only to become trapped.

The site is also scientifically important because it documents a critical time in the evolution of Australia's flora and fauna when lush greenhouse conditions were giving way to a long, slow drying-out that fundamentally reshaped the continent's cargo of life as rainforests retreated.

That climate change caused by the global warming that we all know isn’t happening (tongue firmly planted in cheek) will probably have a great effect on many animals because as the next story shows us, it isn’t only Australia that was affected by warming trends.

We’ll fast-forward several million years to a more recent global warming. We’re headed for Africa where genetic investigators are examining the beginnings of the partnership between humans and the ancestors of today's donkeys. Apparently nomads recruited the animals to help them survive the increasingly harsh Saharan landscape more than 5,000 years ago.

The domestication of wild animals is quite an intellectual breakthrough for humans (although we’re not quite sure what it says about the donkeys) and the researchers provided solid evidence that donkey domestication happened first in northern Africa and happened there more than once.

The researchers used the most comprehensive sampling of mitochondrial DNA ever assembled from ancient, historic and living specimens and determined that the critically endangered African wild ass, which exists today only in small numbers in eastern Africa, zoos and wildlife preserves, is the living ancestor of the modern donkey.

Knowing when and where donkeys were first tamed is important, because there are always cultural ramifications from being first. Having animals at your disposal that you can use as food or transport or as work aids can make you more successful than your neighbors. After all, the horse and donkey were also used in war.

Wombats and donkeys. We share our planet with some astounding creatures. Here’s hoping we don’t destroy ourselves and all of them in the process.