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Living Fossils

These mysterious creatures exist today more or less unevolved from the forms they had hundreds of millions of years ago

By Matt Ransford Posted 7.9.08 at 12:04 pm 3 Comments

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Platypus

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The recent decoding of the platypus's genome confirms what we already knew: the platypus is one of the strangest creatures on Earth. It's technically a mammal because it is covered in fur and produces milk, but it comes up short on the requirement that its young be born live (it is one of two mammals which lays eggs). It's also part bird, having a sophisticated duck-like bill capable of electrosensory, underwater food detection, and part reptile: the male has a spur on its hind legs that delivers a potent venom. Quite possibly one of the earliest offshoots of the mammalian line, having diverged from reptiles 166 million years ago, the platypus lives as an important marker in the study of evolutionary biology.

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3 Comments

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pylestyle

07/11/08 at 8:46 am

seriously, octopuses?

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irsandy

07/11/08 at 3:50 pm

As has been often said - one can safely discuss most anything other than politics and religion, and any attempt to mention 'evolution' just brings out the people with entrenched positions on both sides of the debate.

Personally, I think the article was not useful, as it just rehashed a lot of old data and did not really offer much new - normally I look to Popsci to run items that provide new insight, share some new innovation or answer some previously unanswered question. This article actually did little, other than get the usual suspects to act in their predictable manner.

Its a pity..

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modulus1319

07/11/08 at 6:08 pm

The really strange one here is the platypus. It's almost like it was cobbled together from a random collection of other creatures!

It's interesting that even the creatures that are basically the same as their ancestors from hundreds of millions of years ago have changed in small ways to make them better. This is a reminder that natural selection always occurs when there is a low survival rate to adulthood.