Meet the echidnapus

May 27, 2024 3:44 PM

Meet the echidnapus: Fossils discovered in museum drawer may point to Australian age of monotremes. The "echidnapus" is one of the newly described ancient monotremes from a fossil hotspot in NSW that could give us more clues about an era when egg-laying mammals diversified.

Palaeontologists have named three new monotreme species, including an "echidnapus", which shares platypus and echidna characteristics.

posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (6 comments total)

I say we live in the Age of the Monotremes today! Down with the haters!
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:58 PM on May 27 [4 favorites]

I was really hoping this was going to be an eight-legged echidna.
posted by Jon_Evil at 5:14 PM on May 27 [14 favorites]

we could have had a hotcrossbunodon?
posted by HearHere at 6:35 PM on May 27 [4 favorites]

I say we live in the Age of the Monotremes today!

Every parent of a crying baby knows in their heart they should have just laid an egg like a sensible mammal.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 8:08 PM on May 27 [2 favorites]

Who's a good puspuspuspus?
posted by BlueHorse at 12:53 AM on May 28 [3 favorites]

Thanks for that timely link! My street cred went up a notch at the lab meeting this morning. We're in the final stretch on an evo-immuno paper about [in]fertility, implantation, the development of the placenta and the evolution of mammals; in which monotremes have a star (another county heard from) part. The research is a silver lining to CoViD: in 2020, when graduate students were all turned out of their labs, The Boss made them each start a WFH computational biology / binfo project. Four years later and the completion of the PhD in 2022, here we are!
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:48 AM on May 28 [3 favorites]