Published today in the Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology, evidence of an „Age of Monotremes“ has been unearthed by a team of Australian scientists at the Australian Museum (AM), Museums Victoria and Australian Opal Centre.
Published today in the Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology, evidence of an „Age of Monotremes“ has been unearthed by a team of Australian scientists at the Australian Museum (AM), Museums Victoria and Australian Opal Centre.
The findings were led by two mammalogists, Honorary Associate of the Australian Museum, Professor Tim Flannery; and Professor Kris Helgen, Chief Scientist and Director of the Australian Museum Research Institute (AMRI).
Found in the Lightning Ridge opal fields, NSW, the opalized jaws date back to the Cenomanian Age of the Cretaceous Period, between 102 million to 96.6 million years ago.
Professor Flannery said the research reveals that 100 million years ago, Australia was home to a diversity of monotremes, of which the platypus and the echidna are the only surviving descendants.
„Today, Australia is known as a land of marsupials, but discovering these new fossils is the first indication that Australia was previously home to a diversity of monotremes. It’s like discovering a whole new civilization,“ Professor Flannery said.
Chief Scientist and Director of the Australian Museum Research Institute, Professor Helgen, said the three new species demonstrate combinations of features not previously seen before in other living or fossil monotremes. One of the most striking of the new monotremes, Opalios splendens, retains characteristics of the earliest known monotremes, but also some that foreshadow adaptations in the living monotremes, the echidnas and platypus.
„Opalios splendens sits on a place in the evolutionary tree prior to the evolution of the common ancestor of the monotremes we have today. Its overall anatomy is probably quite like the platypus, but with features of the jaw and snout a bit more like an echidna—you might call it an ‚echidnapus,'“ Professor Helgen said.
