Didelphinae is a subfamily of opossums. Specimens have been collected throughout the Americas

Americas

The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...

 but are predominant in South and Central America.

Some sources call this subfamily the "American opossums", while others use that term for the whole family of opossums, Didelphidae. The term is redundant, though, since all opossums are native to the Americas, while their taxonomic cousins the possum

Possum

A possum is any of about 70 small to medium-sized arboreal marsupial species native to Australia, New Guinea, and Sulawesi .Possums are quadrupedal diprotodont marsupials with long tails...

s are native to Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

.

Further reading

• Les marsupiaux du Tertiaire d'Europe.
• Phylogenetic studies on didelphid marsupials II. Nonmolecular data and new IRBP sequences: Separate and combined analyses of didelphine relationships with denser taxon sampling.
• New didelphine marsupials from La Venta fauna (Miocene) of Colombia, South America.
• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/Browser/wwwtax.cgi?mode=Info&id=126287&lvl=3&lin=f&keep=1&srchmode=1&unlock
• http://www.eol.org/external_link?url=http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/name/Didelphinae