Photo of skull of Obdurodon dicksoni courtesy of T. The fossil remains dating from about 4 million years ago (a leg bone and part of a lower jaw) are similar to corresponding structures in the modern platypus, and may possibly represent the earliest known record of the living animal. They are all believed to have had a bill, though bill size and shape (as shown at left) were not necessarily the same as that of a modern platypus. These animals are estimated to have lived between about 4 and 26 million years ago. Several other former members of the platypus family have been described, based on fossils found at various sites in Australia. It lived in Patagonia (in southern South America) about 61-63 million years ago – at a time when Australia, Antarctica and South America were joined together as part of a single land mass known as Gondwana. The oldest known animal that is definitely believed to have been a member of the platypus family (based on fossilised teeth and some pieces of leg bone) is Monotrematum sudamericanum. None of these early fossils can definitely be said to have been platypus-like, though the remains of Steropodon galmani (a lower jaw fragment containing three teeth, dated to more than 100 million years ago) show some distinctly platypus-like features and suggest that a bill may have been present. At that point in time, the world was still dominated by dinosaurs. Photo courtesy of John Bundock drawing by Frederick Nodder, used to illustrate Shaw’s (1799) paperīased on fossil evidence, the earliest known ancestors of the modern platypus date from the early Cretaceous Period (100-146 million years ago). Accordingly, we tend to favour “platypups”. However, as baby platypus and echidnas don’t look very much alike, once they get past the initial post-hatching “jelly-bean” stage, the use of this term in relation to platypus is somewhat misleading. Taronga Zoo has also used puggle to refer to baby platypuses. The term puggle has been used by the AZA (American Zoological Association) as the generic name for a baby monotreme as joey is the generic name for a baby marsupial. It can be found on interpretive signage about echidnas in wildlife parks around world and on a number of, websites that list names for baby animals.
Since 1991 the term has been used this way in many popular and scientific magazines (like GEO, BBC Wildlife, Australian Natural History and Journal of Mammalogy) as well as children’s books. The word “puggle” has also sometimes been used although this term was originally applied specifically to baby echidnas. One suggested possible name is a “platypup”. There is no official term – equivalent to pup or cub – to describe a baby platypus. The term “platypi” – a Latin plural – is definitely incorrect. Instead, the preferred plural is either “platypus” or “platypuses”, depending on which dictionary you consult. However, this has never caught on for some reason (we can’t imagine why not). When it was later found out that the word “Platypus” had already been applied to a group of beetles, the specimen was renamed Ornithorhynchus anatinus, with the first word meaning “bird-like snout”.īecause the word “platypus” is derived from Greek, its plural should (strictly speaking) be “platypodes”. When the specimen proved to be genuine, Shaw named it Platypus anatinus, from the Greek words “platys” (meaning flat or broad) and “pous” (meaning foot) and a Latin word meaning duck-like (“anatinus”). He even took a pair of scissors to the preserved specimen, expecting to find that the bill had been attached to the rest of the body with stitches. His initial reaction was that this very unusual looking animal was an elaborate hoax. The duck’s babies had their mother’s bill and webbed feet and their father’s four legs and handsome brown fur.Ī British scientist, Dr George Shaw, published the first scientific description of the platypus in 1799. According to Aboriginal legend, the platypus originated when a young female duck mated with a lonely and persuasive water-rat.