![]() It's now estimated that thousands died on the East coast as a result of the 2019-2020 bushfires placing it at risk of extinction. The elusive animal is widespread throughout Eastern Australia, but there have been declines across its range, particularly in the Murray-Darling Basin. A platypus emerges from a creek in Cradle Mountain National Park, Tasmania. For instance, they found that the monotremes have a common gene with birds that helps produce egg yolk, suggesting that other mammals lost this as they adapted to other environments and egg laying didn’t originate independently as an evolutionary trait in the platypus and echidna. To that end an international team of scientists recently released the most complete genetic map yet of the platypus, as well as an echidna, in an effort to tease out clues to their evolutionary origins. The platypus diverged from other mammals about 187 million years ago, which makes them crucial in understanding mammalian evolution and by extension, ourselves! Platypus are also the most archaic living example of any mammal, their existence dating back to the Cretaceous period, and we are still learning about its relative weirdness long after Europeans decided it must have been a stitched-together hoax in the 1790s. It’s not simply a national icon, it’s a globally important animal that we’re lucky enough to have in riverways throughout Eastern Australia and Tasmania. It has forged a path on the evolutionary tree that makes it even more unique than iconic creatures like the rhinoceros and elephant, panda and tapir. With its famous bill, thick fur and spines on its ankles loaded with venom, it’s also the world’s most evolutionary distinct mammal. The platypus ( Ornithorhynchus anatinus) is one of only five types of monotreme (egg-laying mammal), the other four being species of echidna.
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