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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.
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 ...
The fossil evidence of invertebrate-feeding bandicoots and rat-kangaroos, from around the time of the platypus–echidna divergence and pre-dating Tachyglossus, show evidence that echidnas expanded into new ecospace despite competition from marsupials. [38] Additionally, extinct echidnas continue to be described by taxonomists;
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 ...
The platypus is the sole living representative or monotypic taxon of its family Ornithorhynchidae and genus Ornithorhynchus, though a number of related species appear in the fossil record. Together with the four species of echidna, it is one of the five extant species of monotremes, mammals that lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young. [6]
“The discovery and description of a fossil mammal skull is an important step forward in documenting the earliest diversification of mammals after Earth’s last mass extinction.”
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.
It has been theorized that the loss of teeth in the platypus was a geologically recent event, occurring only in the Pleistocene (after over 95 million years of tooth presence in the ornithorhynchid lineage) after the migration of the rakali (Hydromys chrysogaster), a large semiaquatic rodent, to Australia. Competition between the rakali and ...