Museum discovers 150-year-old platypus and echidna specimens that proved some mammals lay eggs Cambridge_Uni
This unique collection had not been catalogued by the museum, so until recently staff had been unaware of its existence. The exciting find was made when Jack Ashby, Assistant Director at the museum, was doing research for a new book on Australian mammals.
He added,"I knew from experience that there isn't a natural history collection on Earth that actually has a comprehensive catalog of everything in it, and I suspected that Caldwell's specimens really ought to be here." He was right: Three months after Ashby asked Collections Manager Mathew Lowe to keep an eye out, a small box of specimens was found in the museum with a note suggesting they were Caldwell's. Ashby's investigations confirmed this was indeed the case.
"In the nineteenth century, many conservative scientists didn't want to believe that an egg-laying mammal could exist, because this would support the theory of evolution—the idea that one animal group was capable of changing into another," said Ashby. For 85 years, European naturalists had been attempting to find proof that platypuses and echidnas lay eggs—including by asking Aboriginal Australians—but any results they sent home were ignored or dismissed.
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