Scientists led by Tim Flannery have unearthed evidence for a previously unknown “age of monotremes” when egg-laying mammals dominated Australia.
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.From the electrosensitive bill and venomous spur of a platypus to the echidna’s thorny armour and four-pronged penis, the zoological quirks of modern-day monotremes have long attracted international awe and scientific wonder.
Six ancient species of monotreme have emerged from Lightning Ridge opalised fossils, including the “echidnapus” .“What it shows us is that 100 million years ago, we had six kinds of monotreme that were living at the same time in the same place. And we have no other mammals from this site,” chief scientist of the Australian Museum Professor Kris Helgen said.
The tiny opalised jaw and teeth fossils contain rich information about ancient species’ lives and diets.was slightly bigger than a modern platypus and was semiaquatic, but it had a slender snout somewhere between a platypus and an echidna. It’s too old to be the genuine ancestor of both creatures, Flannery said, but it provides an idea of what the common ancestor of surviving monotremes might have looked like.
As the rakali specialised in things that crunch. The platypus may have evolved to eat soft and slippery food and lost its teeth.Perhaps as rakali snapped up hard-bodied prey such as mussels and crayfish, platypus evolved to hunt softer animals including worms, larvae and shrimp, and no longer needed sharp teeth.
The opalised fossil jawbone of Steropodon galmani, another monotreme discovered at Lightning Ridge that was the first Mesozoic mammal discovered from Australia.But fossils can be easily lost or ground up in the opal mining process. The tiny echidnapus jaw bone was pieced together from several fragments.
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