{"id":74,"date":"2021-10-11T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2021-10-11T01:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/?page_id=74"},"modified":"2022-12-23T12:01:14","modified_gmt":"2022-12-23T01:31:14","slug":"monotremes","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/fossils\/vertebrate-fossils\/monotremes\/","title":{"rendered":"Monotremes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wpb-content-wrapper\"><p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/2&#8243;][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n<h1><span class=\"dropcap2\"><strong>Monotremes<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n<p style=\"line-height: 19.5pt;background: white;margin: 0cm 0cm 19.5pt 0cm\"><span style=\"font-size: 11.5pt;font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif;color: #222222\">Monotremes are egg-laying mammals. Today they are found only in Australia and New Guinea. They are represented by five living species \u2013 the aquatic platypus, and four species of land-dwelling echidna.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 19.5pt;background: white;margin: 0cm 0cm 19.5pt 0cm\"><span style=\"font-size: 11.5pt;font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif;color: #222222\">The fossil record indicates that monotremes likely evolved here in Australia, the earliest representatives coming from the middle Cretaceous (~100-120 Ma) of Victoria (Flat Rocks) and NSW (Lightning Ridge). There was also much more variation in body size, ranging from the 40 g <i>Teinolophos trusleri <\/i>to the 4-8 kg, platypus-like <i>Kollikodon<\/i> <i>ritchiei<\/i> which was nearly a metre long! In the Palaeocene epoch (66\u221256 million years ago) monotremes were also found as far away as southern South America, suggesting a Gondwanan distribution, but they never made it to the northern hemisphere.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0cm;line-height: 19.5pt;background: white\"><span style=\"font-size: 11.5pt;font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif;color: #222222\">During the Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million years ago to 12,000 years ago) there were at least two species of echidna in Australia that are now extinct \u2013\u00a0<em><span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif\">Megalibgwillia owenii<\/span><\/em>, and a \u2018giant\u2019 species\u00a0<em><span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif\">Murrayglossus hacketti <\/span><\/em><em><span style=\"font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif;font-style: normal\">(~20-30 kg)<\/span><\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[\/vc_column_text][vc_separator][\/vc_column][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/2&#8243;][vc_empty_space][vc_empty_space][vc_empty_space][vc_single_image image=&#8221;69&#8243; img_size=&#8221;full&#8221; style=&#8221;vc_box_border_circle_2&#8243; border_color=&#8221;mulled_wine&#8221;][vc_empty_space][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/2&#8243;][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n<h3>Explore fossils in 3D:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/fossils\/vertebrate-fossils\/monotremes\/zaglossus-hacketti\/\"><em>Zaglossus hacketti<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/2&#8243;][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text] Monotremes Monotremes are egg-laying mammals. Today they are found only in Australia and New Guinea. They are represented by five living species \u2013 the aquatic platypus, and four species of land-dwelling echidna. The fossil record indicates that monotremes likely evolved here in Australia, the earliest representatives coming from the middle Cretaceous (~100-120 Ma) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"parent":207,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-74","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/74\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}