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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.
In 2024, Late Cretaceous -aged fossil specimens of actual early platypus relatives were recovered from the same rocks as Steropodon, including the basal Opalios and the more derived Dharragarra, the latter of which may be the oldest member of the platypus stem-lineage, as it retains the same dental formula found in Cenozoic platypus relatives ...
“And it represents an entire ecology of the ocean 9 millions of years ago.” The fossils were first uncovered during the school’s modernization project, which began in 2022.
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 ...
The male echidna's penis is 7 centimetres (2.8 in) long when erect, and its shaft is covered with penile spines. [29] These may be used to induce ovulation in the female. [30] It is a challenge to study the echidna in its natural habitat, and they show no interest in mating while in captivity. Prior to 2007, no one had ever seen an echidna ...
In addition to the platypus and other monotremes, sharks, rays, bees, some fish, and dolphins can also detect electric fields. The electroreceptors on the Platypus bill pick up these tiny ...
These include the four species of anteater, more than a dozen armadillos, eight species of pangolin (plus fossil species), eight species of the monotreme (egg-laying mammals) echidna (plus fossil species), the Fruitafossor of the Late Jurassic, the marsupial numbat, the African aardvark, the aardwolf, and possibly also the sloth bear of South ...