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The platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus), [4] sometimes referred to as the duck-billed platypus, [5] is a semiaquatic, egg-laying mammal endemic to eastern Australia, including Tasmania. The platypus is the sole living representative or monotypic taxon of its family Ornithorhynchidae and genus Ornithorhynchus , though a number of related species ...
Monotremes. Family Ornithorhynchidae (platypus) Genus Ornithorhynchus (platypus) Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) Family Tachyglossidae Genus Tachyglossus (short-beaked echidna) Short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus) Genus Zaglossus (long-beaked echidnas) Western long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus bruijnii)
Monotremes are mammals with a unique method of reproduction: they lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young. Two of the five known living species of monotreme occur in Australia: the platypus and the short-beaked echidna. The platypus — a venomous, egg-laying, duck-billed, amphibious mammal — is one of the strangest creatures in the ...
Monotremes (/ ˈ m ɒ n ə t r iː m z /) are mammals of the order Monotremata. They are the only group of living mammals that lay eggs, rather than bearing live young. The extant monotreme species are the platypus and the four species of echidnas. Monotremes are typified by structural differences in their brains, jaws, digestive tract ...
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.
This contrasts with the modern platypus, where adults are entirely toothless. 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 ...
The four extant species of echidnas and the platypus are the only living mammals that lay eggs and the only surviving members of the order Monotremata. [3] The diet of some species consists of ants and termites, but they are not closely related to the American true anteaters or to hedgehogs. Their young are called puggles.
Billed snouts on the duck-billed dinosaurs hadrosaurs are strikingly convergent with ducks and the duck-billed platypus. [76] Ichthyosaurs (such as Ophthalmosaurus) [77] are marine reptile of the Mesozoic era which looked strikingly like dolphins. [78] Several groups of marine reptiles evolved hyperphalangy similar to modern whales. [61]