of, relating to, or belonging to the Metatheria, a subclass of mammals comprising the marsupials
noun
2.
any metatherian mammal; marsupial
Compare eutherian, prototherian
Word origin
C19: from New Latin, from meta- + Greek thērion animal
metatherian in American English
(ˌmetəˈθɪəriən)
adjective
1.
belonging or pertaining to the group Metatheria, comprising the marsupial mammals
noun
2.
a metatherian animal
Word origin
[1875–80; ‹ NL Metatheri(a) name of the group (‹ Gk meta-meta- + thēría, pl. of thēríon animal) + -an]This word is first recorded in the period 1875–80. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: Diaspora, fan-tan, massage, neoclassic, weekend-an is a suffix occurring originally in adjectives borrowed from Latin, formed from nounsdenoting places (Roman; urban) or persons (Augustan), and now productively forming English adjectives by extension of the Latin pattern.Attached to geographical names, it denotes provenance or membership (American; Chicagoan), the latter sense now extended to membership in social classes, religious denominations,etc., in adjectives formed from various kinds of noun bases (Episcopalian; pedestrian; Puritan; Republican) and membership in zoological taxa (acanthocephalan; crustacean). Attached to personal names, it has the additional senses “contemporary with” (Elizabethan; Jacobean) or “proponent of” (Hegelian; Freudian) the person specified by the noun base. It also occurs in a set of personal nouns,mainly loanwords from French, denoting one who engages in, practices, or works withthe referent of the base noun (comedian; grammarian; historian; theologian)
Examples of 'metatherian' in a sentence
metatherian
Previous views on deltatheroidan relationships were diverse, but recent studies favored their metatherian affinity.
Shundong Bi, Xingsheng Jin, Shuo Li, Tianming Du 2015, 'A new Cretaceous Metatherian mammal from Henan, China', PeerJhttps://peerj.com/articles/896.pdf. Retrieved from DOAJ CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode)