Everyone knows that the platypus is the world’s strangest mammal, obeying conventions as well as Alice Cooper or Ozzy Osbourne ever did.
But an “exciting” new fossil is revealing more about this ancient lineage’s long history: namely some serious gnashers.
Paleontologists made the rare discovery east of the Flinders Ranges in the remote outback of South Australia.
“Platypuses are extremely rare in the fossil record and are often restricted to teeth, so it’s exciting to find new material and learn more about these unique mammals,” said Dr. Aaron Camens, of Flinders University, Adelaide.
The well-preserved fossils of the oldest known species, Obdurodon insignis, described in the journal Australian Zoologist, show that a toothed ancestor of the modern platypus lived during the late Oligocene period around 25 million years ago in the huge lakes, slow-flowing rivers, and forested lowlands of central Australia.
Dr. Camens said Obdurodon insignis mainly differs from modern platypuses by having well-formed teeth—molars and premolars—while the modern platypus loses vestigial teeth shortly after birth, and uses only a small horny pad to chew its food as adults.
Previously, the ancient platypus was known only by one-and-a-half molar teeth, a jaw fragment and a pelvis fragment.
“The new premolar for Obdurodon insignis shows this species also had large, pointed front teeth, which with its large robust molar teeth could easily have crushed animals with shells or robust exoskeletons like yabbies,” (a freshwater shrimp) said sudy co-author Professor Trevor Worthy, from the Paleontology Lab at Flinders University.
A scapula showed that the animal swam and moved much like the modern platypus, and differed mainly by being slightly larger and having teeth.
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The Flinders University team has organized expeditions to an outback desert location east of the Flinders Ranges for over 20 years to study rocks containing fossils.
More than a thousand fossils of non-fish vertebrate animals have been collected, including just three fossils of the toothed platypus.
Professor Worthy says the forests then were home to diverse communities of arboreal of tree-dwelling mammals, such as koalas and many types of possums.
“In the trees, numerous birds including the giant eagle Archaehierax lived,” he said. “Below, on the ground, sheep-sized marsupials browsed.”
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“The lakes supported many kinds of lungfish and other smaller fish. Little known, is that a small dolphin also lived in these freshwater ecosystems. Its teeth and bones have been found at several places where the rocks expose this ancient community.”
“But as the new fossils show, another mammal swam with the dolphins: an ancient, toothed platypus.”
He says the rainforests and lakes have long gone, but platypuses have been swimming in Australian waterways ever since.
“I have studied this lost ecosystem for many years now,” said Worthy, “and it is for exquisite fossils like these that I return again and again to the desert; one never knows what erosion or one’s efforts will reveal next.”
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