1/5/2024 0 Comments Platypus lay eggs![]() ![]() “Although this research focuses on the past of these remarkable mammals, we also want to highlight the urgent need for protection of our modern platypuses and echidnas, which are under threat and in decline as a result of human-induced habitat degradation,” Flannery says. Though the history of our iconic monotremes is varied and diverse, Flannery notes that today’s monotremes are the last, vulnerable strongholds of a vibrant lineage. “ Murrayglossus roamed the Australian landscape in the Pleistocene epoch with megafauna like gigantic kangaroos, the marsupial lion and the Diprotodon,” Helgen says. Murrayglossus was named in honour of Peter Murray, a now-retired Australian palaeontologist who wrote extensively on echidna fossils. Do any mammals lay eggs Only two kinds of egg-laying mammals are left on the planet todaythe duck-billed platypus and the echidna, or spiny anteater.These odd monotremes once dominated Australia, until their pouch-bearing cousins, the marsupials, invaded the land down under 71 million to 54 million years ago and swept them away. “Weighing 30kg in size, roughly the size of a wombat, this massive monotreme would have been many times the size of modern Australian echidnas,” says Helgen. The largest egg-laying mammal ever discovered, this 30-kg animal may have specialised in eating termites. Murrayglossus hacketti, a giant echidna of the Pleistocene of Western Australia. This frigid polar landscape, perhaps surprisingly, still had forests which withstood at least three months of freezing darkness each year. The researchers found that the oldest-known monotreme, Teinolophos trusleri, lived some 130 million years ago when south-eastern Australia lay close to the South Pole. The research, published in Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology, involved examining every significant monotreme fossil currently known, to chart their history and evolution. Now, a team of scientists, headed up by Australian Museum (AM) Chief Scientist Kristofer Helgen and AM honorary associate Tim Flannery, has unravelled the monotremes’ origin story, tracing them back to the chilly polar forests of an ancient world. Today, they comprise just two species: the echidna and the platypus.īut these strange creatures are the last survivors of a much larger and more diverse set of species that once roamed the southern continents. Wrap: our most eggs-cellent science stories of the yearĪustralia’s mysterious monotremes are the world’s only living, egg-laying mammals.Echidna’s ‘digging walk’ cultivates Australian soil.Platypus venom may treat type 2 diabetes.
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