Le gentil petit ornithorynque avait un gros cousin préhistorique:
An extinct species of huge, carnivorous platypus about a metre long – the largest platypus ever found – has been discovered in the famous Riversleigh World Heritage Area of Queensland. Unlike the living species, it had fully functional teeth that may have been used to kill and consume a wide range of animals that lived alongside it in ancient pools and lakes.
The new species, named Obdurodon tharalkooschild, has been identified from a highly distinctive tooth found in a deposit that has not been dated yet, but is likely to be between 15 and 5 million years old.
(...) Based on the size of its tooth, it is estimated that the extinct species would have been twice the size of the modern platypus. “Like other platypuses, it was probably a mostly aquatic mammal, and would have lived in and around the freshwater pools in the forests that covered the Riversleigh area millions of years ago,” says UNSW’s Associate Professor Hand. “Obdurodon tharalkooschild was a very large platypus with well-developed teeth, and we think it probably fed not only on crayfish and other freshwater crustaceans, but also on small vertebrates including the lungfish, frogs, and small turtles that are preserved with it in the Two Tree Site fossil deposit,” she says.
(...) Toothed platypuses, Monotrematum sudamericanum, were present in South America until 61 million years ago. The oldest fossil platypus found in Australia was a small, toothed species, Obdurodon insignis, from 26 million-year old lake deposits in what is now the Simpson Desert.
An extinct species of huge, carnivorous platypus about a metre long – the largest platypus ever found – has been discovered in the famous Riversleigh World Heritage Area of Queensland. Unlike the living species, it had fully functional teeth that may have been used to kill and consume a wide range of animals that lived alongside it in ancient pools and lakes.
The new species, named Obdurodon tharalkooschild, has been identified from a highly distinctive tooth found in a deposit that has not been dated yet, but is likely to be between 15 and 5 million years old.
(...) Based on the size of its tooth, it is estimated that the extinct species would have been twice the size of the modern platypus. “Like other platypuses, it was probably a mostly aquatic mammal, and would have lived in and around the freshwater pools in the forests that covered the Riversleigh area millions of years ago,” says UNSW’s Associate Professor Hand. “Obdurodon tharalkooschild was a very large platypus with well-developed teeth, and we think it probably fed not only on crayfish and other freshwater crustaceans, but also on small vertebrates including the lungfish, frogs, and small turtles that are preserved with it in the Two Tree Site fossil deposit,” she says.
(...) Toothed platypuses, Monotrematum sudamericanum, were present in South America until 61 million years ago. The oldest fossil platypus found in Australia was a small, toothed species, Obdurodon insignis, from 26 million-year old lake deposits in what is now the Simpson Desert.
