It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Ancient platypus was big and bitey
PLATYPUSES may be known for their duck bills and timidity, but an extinct relative was bigger than a bulldog and had teeth strong enough to crush turtles.
(Artist's impression of a giant, extinct platypus feeding on a tortoise. Artwork by Peter Schouten. The inset photo of the platypus's molar shows it was vastly different to the dysfunctional teeth of living platypuses.)
NSW biologists have identified a previously unknown species of platypus – the fifth and biggest so far – from a tooth found at a renowned fossil site in Queensland’s gulf country.
“It would have been one of the biggest animals by far in those ancient waterways,” said University of NSW palaeontologist Mike Archer.
“Only crocodiles would have been bigger. Everything else would have thought twice about going for a swim with this platypus-zilla.”
Before the latest find, three extinct platypus species were known from fossils discovered in Central Australia’s Simpson Desert, Argentina’s far south and the Riversleigh World Heritage Area in Queensland. The new species is thought to have lived between five and 15 million years ago, reaching a metre in length.
Based on the size of tooth, it is estimated that this extinct species would have been nearly a meter (more than three feet) long, twice the size of the modern platypus. The bumps and ridges on the teeth also provide clues about what this species likely ate.
The latest discovery contradicts views that the platypus evolved in a “linear” fashion with only one species existing at a time. “There were unanticipated side branches on this (evolutionary) tree, some of which became gigantic,” Professor Archer said.
He said the discovery reinforced ideas that the platypus’s closest relative, the echidna, had evolved after the Patagonian platypus died out about 60 million years ago. “We have to look at echidnas as specialised platypuses that came out of the water, and started chasing termites instead of yabbies,” he said.
The modern platypus completely lacks teeth as an adult and instead bears horny pads in its mouth; Obdurodon tharalkooschild is unlikely to have been its immediate ancestor.
Toothed platypuses, Monotrematum sudamericanum, lived in what is now South America until 61 million years ago.
The oldest extinct platypus found in Australia was 26-million-year-old Obdurodon insignis. A larger species, Obdurodon dicksoni, was found in 19 to 15 million year old deposits at Riversleigh, and the remains include the only known fossil platypus skull.
While many of Riversleigh’s fossil deposits are now being radiometrically dated, the precise age of the particular deposit that produced the new species, Obdurodon tharalkooschild, is in doubt but is likely to be between 15 and 5 million years old.
The species has been dubbed Obdurodon tharalkooschild after a Greek word for “permanent tooth” and the Dreamtime character Tharalkoo, a duck who was accosted by a water-rat and gave birth to the first platypus.
5. The Platypus has no nipples.
I have nipples. I am a man, I do not lactate, yet I have nipples. This makes me the exact opposite of the female platypus. The female platypus does lactate... and does feed its young with mother’s milk... but without nipples. So how, you might ask, does the mother platypus get the milk into the mouths of her demon spawn? The same way you get sweat in your belly button, my friend... the very same way.
The milk is literally secreted through pores in the platypus' skin where it pools up along grooves in the mother's abdomen, ready to be licked up by the eager little offspring.
Kangaruex4Ewe
5. The Platypus has no nipples.
I have nipples. I am a man, I do not lactate, yet I have nipples. This makes me the exact opposite of the female platypus. The female platypus does lactate... and does feed its young with mother’s milk... but without nipples. So how, you might ask, does the mother platypus get the milk into the mouths of her demon spawn? The same way you get sweat in your belly button, my friend... the very same way.
The milk is literally secreted through pores in the platypus' skin where it pools up along grooves in the mother's abdomen, ready to be licked up by the eager little offspring.