| rdfs:comment
| - The earliest monotreme (egg-laying mammals) fossils found so far are from the early Cretaceous period, about 100 million years ago, during the reign of the dinosaurs. These creatures, called Steropodon, Kollicodon and Teinolophos, lived in Australia and are the ancestors of modern platypuses and echidnas, and looked kind of like a cross between the two.
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| abstract
| - The earliest monotreme (egg-laying mammals) fossils found so far are from the early Cretaceous period, about 100 million years ago, during the reign of the dinosaurs. These creatures, called Steropodon, Kollicodon and Teinolophos, lived in Australia and are the ancestors of modern platypuses and echidnas, and looked kind of like a cross between the two. The first animal really similar to a platypus, as far as we know, was Obdurodon, which lived about 20 million years ago in Australia, but is probably much older than that, because a 60 million years old fossil was found in South America (the only non-Australian platypus of any time period). The modern platypus species, Ornythorhynchus, has been around for at least 100,000 years, possibly longer
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