In South America, there was a prehistoric relative of the platypus

One of the strangest mammals in the world is the platypus, a cross between a duck, a beaver and an ovipositor. Today, its area of ​​​​appearance is located between Australia and the island of Tasmania.

And a recent discovery showed that a prehistoric relative of this animal lived in South America: Patagorhynchus pascuali, which lived in the place where now Patagoniain southern Argentina, during the Late Cretaceous, about 70 million years ago.

“The appearance of early monotremes in the Lower Cretaceous of Australia led to a consensus that this clade originated on this continent and then arrived in South America,” said Dr. Nicholas Cimento, a paleontologist at the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences Bernardino Rivadavia. ‘ and CONICET, as well as their counterparts in Argentina, Japan and Australia.

“The discovery of a Late Cretaceous monotreme from southern Argentina demonstrates that monotremes were present in the circumpolar regions during the late Mesozoic and that their distinctive anatomical features were probably also present in these ancient forms.”

Lower second molar patagorynchus pasquali was collected from the Cueva Puma field of the Chorrillo formation, which appeared in the province of Santa Cruz, Patagonia, Argentina.

“The discovery expands the list of mammals documented in the Chorrillo Formation and similar Dorothea Formations in southern South America,” the researchers noted.

“Opening patagorynchus pasquali clearly demonstrates that monotremes have already reached a wide paleogeographic distribution, covering southern South America, Australia and Antarctica, the latter as a connecting route (but fossils of monotremes are still unknown on this land mass), constituting a characteristic clade of the paleobiogeographic province of Weddela. , they concluded.

An article about the results was published in the journal Communication biology.