It’s part-reptile, part-mammal, part-bird – and totally unique. Two centuries after European scientists deemed a dead specimen so outlandish it had to be a fake, the bizarre genetic secrets of Australia’s platypus have been laid bare.
Platypuses lay eggs and produce venom like some reptiles, but they sport furry coats and feed their young with milk like mammals. The odd creatures are classed as monotremes, with only one close relative – the echidna.
But as primitive mammals that share the same ancestor as humans, a study of the animal’s genome can improve biologists’ understanding of how mammals evolved, while illuminating the platypus’s strange physiology.
Wesley Warren at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, led the international team that sequenced the platypus genome. As expected, they found an amalgam of some ancestral reptile and some newer mammalian features. But there were also surprises.
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