Range
The Virginia opossum is found throughout Central America and North America east of the Rockies from Costa Rica to southern Ontario; it seems to be still expanding its range northward and has been found farther north than Toronto. In recent years their range has expanded west and north all the way into northern Minnesota. Its ancestors evolved in South America, but invaded North America in the Great American Interchange, which was enabled by the formation of the Isthmus of Panama about 3 million years ago.
Originally native to the eastern United States, it was intentionally introduced into the West during the Great Depression, probably as a source of food, and now occupies much of the Pacific coast. Its range has been expanding steadily northwards into Canada.
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Famous quotes containing the word range:
“but we wish the river had another shore,
some further range of delectable mountains,”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“A girl must allow others to share the responsibility for care, thus enabling others to care for her. She must learn how to care in ways appropriate to her age, her desires, and her needs; she then acts with authenticity. She must be allowed the freedom not to care; she then has access to a wide range of feelings and is able to care more fully.”
—Jeanne Elium (20th century)
“The Canadians of those days, at least, possessed a roving spirit of adventure which carried them further, in exposure to hardship and danger, than ever the New England colonist went, and led them, though not to clear and colonize the wilderness, yet to range over it as coureurs de bois, or runners of the woods, or, as Hontan prefers to call them, coureurs de risques, runners of risks; to say nothing of their enterprising priesthood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)