The skeleton looks like a duck-billed platypus, and the creature probably walked like a duck-billed platypus, but it isn’t necessarily a duck-billed platypus. It might be a newly discovered species that sits evolutionarily between an echidna and a platypus, according to a study published in Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Paleontology.
An Australian team of researchers analyzed three new monotreme species in New South Wales, dating back about 100 million years ago. One of them, Opalios splendens, seems like a bridge between echidna and platypus.
“Opalios splendens sits on a place in the evolutionary tree prior to the evolution of the common ancestor of the monotremes we have today,” Tim Flannery, honorary associate of the Australian Museum and a co-leader of the excavation team, said in a press release.
