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The class Mammalia is divided into two subclasses based on reproductive techniques: egg-laying mammals (yinotherians or monotremes - see also Australosphenida), and mammals which give live birth . The latter subclass is divided into two infraclasses: pouched mammals ( metatherians or marsupials ), and placental mammals ( eutherians , for which ...
The traditional "Theria hypothesis" states that the divergence of the monotreme lineage from the Metatheria and Eutheria lineages happened prior to the divergence between marsupials and placentals, and this explains why monotremes retain a number of primitive traits presumed to have been present in the synapsid ancestors of later mammals, such ...
Oviparity is found in insects, birds. Among mammals, the monotremes are oviparous. Ovo-viviparity: or oviparity with retention of zygotes in either the female's or in the male's body, but there are no trophic interactions between zygote and parents. [1] This mode is found in the slowworm, Anguis fragilis. In the sea horse, zygotes are retained ...
A marsupial has a short gestation period, typically shorter than its estrous cycle, and gives birth to an underdeveloped newborn that then undergoes further development; in many species, this takes place within a pouch-like sac, the marsupium, located in the front of the mother's abdomen.
Oviparity occurs in all birds, most reptiles, some fishes, and most arthropods. Among mammals , monotremes (four species of echidna , and the platypus ) are uniquely oviparous. In all but special cases of both ovuliparity and oviparity, the overwhelming source of nourishment for the embryo is the nutrients stored in the yolk, pre-deposited in ...
Marsupials also have other common structural features. Ossified patellae are absent in most modern marsupials (though a small number of exceptions are reported) [6] and epipubic bones are present. Marsupials (and monotremes) also lack a gross communication (corpus callosum) between the right and left brain hemispheres. [7]
Their observed adaptive radiation contradicts the assumption that monotremes are frozen in morphological and molecular evolution. It has been suggested that echidnas originally evolved in New Guinea when it was isolated from Australia and from marsupials. This would explain their rarity in the fossil record, their abundance in present times in ...
Australia is home to two of the five extant species of monotremes and the majority of the world's marsupials (the remainder are from Papua New Guinea, eastern Indonesia and the Americas). The taxonomy is somewhat fluid; this list generally follows Menkhorst and Knight [ 1 ] and Van Dyck and Strahan, [ 2 ] with some input from the global list ...