Discovery of Fossils of Ancient Relatives of Platypuses that Once Lived in Patagonia

Nationalgeographic.co.id—Paleontologists have reported the discovery of fossils of an ancient relative of the platypus in Patagonia, Southern Argentina. The specimen is then identified and named Patagorhynchus pascuali, represents the first Cretaceous scalloped monotreme of the Gondwana supercontinent.

The findings have been described in the journal Communications Biology by title “First monotreme from the Late Cretaceous of South America” online recently.

Patagorhynchus pascuali lived in what is now Patagonia, during the Late Cretaceous, about 70 million years ago.

At that time, Argentina was part of Gondwana, an ancient supercontinent in the Southern Hemisphere.

Patagorhynchus pascuali belongs to the group Monotremes, a group of egg-laying mammals, represented by the living platypus and echidna, which are endemic to Australia, and adjacent islands.

“The appearance of an early monotreme in the Early Cretaceous of Australia has led to a consensus that this clade originated on the continent, then arrived in South America,” says Nicolás Chimento, a paleontologist at the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales ‘Bernardino Rivadavia’ and CONICET, and his colleagues. from Argentina, Japan, and Australia.

“The discovery of Late Cretaceous monotremes from southern Argentina indicates that monotremes existed in a circumpolar region at the end of the Mesozoic, and their distinctive anatomical features may also have existed in these ancient forms.”

Patagorhynchus pascuali’s second lower molar was collected from the Puma Cave site of the Chorrillo Formation, excised in Santa Cruz province, Patagonia, Argentina.

“This discovery expands the list of mammals documented in the Chorrillo and equivalent Dorotea formations in southern South America,” the researchers wrote.

This newly discovered specimen is related to the fossil remains of early mammals, frogs, turtles, snakes, ornithopods, sauropod and theropod dinosaurs, birds, aquatic plants, freshwater snails and larvae of the abundant chironomid insects, with the last two invertebrates forming part of the food for live platypuses.

“It’s likely that Patagorhynchus pascuali have acquired ecological and behavioral characteristics similar to living platypuses,” they said.