 Krause wrote that UA 8699 was the first marsupial to be identified from Madagascar and the first from the Mesozoic of any part of Gondwana . Marsupials date back to the Eocene in Australia and Africa and to the Paleocene in South America ; although Cretaceous marsupials have been recorded there , none of the records are unambiguous . Marsupials were certainly present in the Northern Hemisphere during the late Cretaceous . He interpreted UA 8699 as evidence that marsupials must already have colonized the southern continents by the late Cretaceous , presumably having reached Madagascar through South America and Antarctica . By the late Cretaceous , boreosphenidans must already have been in the process of replacing archaic mammals like gondwanatheres on the southern continents , as suggested by the presence of Deccanolestes , a placental , in the Cretaceous of India . 
