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Ornithorhynchoidea is a superfamily of mammals containing the only living monotremes, the platypus and the echidnas, as well as their closest fossil relatives, to the exclusion of more primitive fossil monotremes of uncertain affinity.
In 2024, Flannery et al. described Opalios splendens as a new genus and species of early monotreme based on these fossil remains. They erected the new monotypic family Opalionidae within the Ornithorhynchoidea —the superfamily also containing modern echidnas and platypus —to house Opalios due to its similarity to both of these extant lineages.
The Ornithorhynchidae / ɔːr ˌ n ɪ θ ə ˈ r ɪ ŋ k ɪ d iː / are one of the two extant families in the order Monotremata, and contain the platypus and its extinct relatives. The other family is the Tachyglossidae, or echidnas.
Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna, which was thought to be extinct, has stunned scientists after being filmed in a tropical forest in Indonesia for the first time.. The egg-laying mammal, named ...
Dharragarra is one of the oldest members of the platypus and echidna lineage, being closer to them than the coeval ornithorhynchoid Opalios.Due to the close resemblance of its jaw to that of a platypus, Dharragarra is considered one of the oldest members of the platypus stem lineage, although it likely predates the divergence of platypuses and echidnas.
Today, there are only five surviving species of monotremes which live in Australia and New Guinea, consisting of the platypus and four species of echidna. Fossils of yinotheres have been found in Britain, China, Russia, Madagascar and Argentina. Contrary to other known crown mammals, they retained postdentary bones as shown by the presence of a ...
A platypus bill may look like a duck’s bill, but it has a secret ability. ... While most modern mammals begin showing up in fossil records dating back 60 million years, monotremes are thought to ...
The echidna spurs are vestigial and have no known function, while the platypus spurs contain venom. [42] Molecular data show that the main component of platypus venom emerged before the divergence of platypus and echidnas, suggesting that the most recent common ancestor of these taxa was also possibly a venomous monotreme. [43]