Monotremes Sentence Examples

Adult monotremes are in like case, although the duckbilled platypus (Ornithorhynchus) has teeth when young on the sides of the jaws.

Winge, a large number of these creatures are primitive monotremes.

Others however (inclusive of Tritylodon and Microlestes, if they be really mammals), seem nearer to the Monotremata; and the question has yet to be decided whether placentals and marsupials on the one hand, and monotremes on the other are not independently derived from reptilian ancestors.

Monotremes (2 species) and marsupials (4 families and 44 species) predominate, but are not abundant.

Under the heading of Multituberculata will be found a brief account of certain extinct mammals from the Mesozoic formations of Europe and North America which have been regarded as more or less nearly related to the monotremes.

Although the present article does not discuss mammalian osteology in general (for which see Vertebrata), it is interesting to notice in this connexion that the primitive condition of the mammalian tympanum apparently consisted merely of a small and incomplete bony ring, with, at most, an imperfect ventral wall to the tympanic cavity, and that a close approximation to this original condition still persists in the monotremes, especially Ornithorhynchus.

In common with the other monotremes, the male echidna has its heel provided with a sharp hollow spur, connected with a secreting gland, and with muscles capable of pressing the secretion from the gland into the spur.

Finding a fossil monotreme in Argentina suggested that monotremes once occurred across Gondwanaland (Antartica, Australia and South America ).

The egg-laying monotremes (Prototherians) diverged from the main stock in the early Jurassic period (some 200 mya ).

The group, which has also the alternative title of Didelphia, is by some authorities regarded as a sub-class of the mammalia of equal rank with the Monotremata, while by others it is brigaded with the placentals, so that the two together form a sub-class of equal grade with the one represented by the monotremes.

There is much to be urged in favour of either view; and in adopting the former alternative, it must be borne in mind that the difference between monotremes and marsupials is vastly greater than that which separates the latter from placentals.

According to the latter, the early monotremes which became specialized into modern monotremes, gave rise to the ancestors of the modern marsupials; while the modern placentals are likewise an offshoot from the ancestral marsupial stcck.

Further, it is considered that too much weight has been assigned to the characters distinguishing monotremes from other mammals, foetal marsupials showing a monotreme type of coracoid, while it is probable that in the long run it will be found impossible to maintain the essential dissimilarity between the milk-glands of monotremes and other mammals.

These three classes are the Monotremata (or Prototheria), the Marsupialia (Didelphia, or Metatheria), and the Placentalia (Monodelphia, or Eutheria); the distinctive characters of each being given in separate articles (see Mono Tremata, Marsupialia and Monodelphia.) The existing monotremes and marsupials are each represented only by a single order; but the placentals are divided into the following ordinal and subordinal groups, those which are extinct being marked with an asterisk (*) i.

The name scaly anteater is applied to the pangolin; the banded anteater (Myrmecobius fasciatus) is a marsupial, and the spiny anteater (Echidna) is one of the monotremes (see Marsupialia and Monotremata).

The pouch from which the marsupials take their name is supported by the two epipubic bones, but does not correspond to the temporary breeding-pouch of the monotremes.

Very different, on the other hand, is the condition of things in Australia and Papua, where marsupials (and monotremes) are the dominant forms of mammalian life, the placentals being represented (apart from bats, which are mainly of an Asiatic type) only by a number of more or less aberrant rodents belonging to the mouse-tribe, and in Australia by the dingo, or native dog, and in New Guinea by a wild pig.