The Australian platypus is one of Earth’s most unusual creatures — but there was a time when it might not have stood out in a crowd. In roughly 100-million-year-old rocks in Australia, scientists have unearthed three new species of monotremes, a group of egg-laying mammals that today include only the platypus and another Australian oddball, the echidna (SN: 11/18/16).
The fossil discoveries double the number of known monotreme species during this brief span of the Cretaceous Period, hinting at a bygone Age of Monotremes, mammal biologist Timothy Flannery and colleagues report May 26 in Alcheringa: An Australian Journal of Palaeontology.
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