Ornithorhynchus agilis (3.8 mya) may be oldest fossil relative to living/extant platypus (Bino et al.Platypus thought to be older than echidnas (Augee et al.Venom in modern platypus thought to be used by adult males to gain mating access to females (not defense).Common ancestor of platypus and echidnas was also venomous, possibly for defense (Whittington and Belov 2014).Likely during or before early Cretaceous (Rowe et al.2009 Nicol 2015)-large gap in the fossil record (Augee et al. Divergence between echidnas and platypuses difficult to estimate (Phillips et al.Only the lineage containing the echidnas and platypuses survived the Australian ‘marsupial invasion’ of the Eocene to early Cretaceous (Phillips et al.Echidna-like monotreme, Kryoryctes cadburyi, from the Cretaceous (Pridmore et al.
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