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...many specimens of a particular species the department has, you first have to look the animal up in a small file. Under Ornithorhynchus Anatinus, there are 31 listings, cross-indexed to the sagging ledgers. That book says that the first specimens of Ornithorhynchus, commonly known as the duck-billed platypus of Australia, were handed over to Alexander Agassiz in 1878 by E. Gerrard Jr. Those first specimens are skeletal parts and they are catalogued, down to the last tibia, in a small hand in black ink under the title Ornithorhynchus Paradoxus...

Author: By Philip Weiss, | Title: Platypus Crackers | 12/18/1975 | See Source »

Until the 20th century, the platypus was scientifically known as Paradoxus because it is such a baffling creature. It lays eggs, has a toothless bill and its feet are webbed. But it also has fur and a diaphragm, the females suckle their young, and the males have foreskins--all of which are characteristic of mammals. The platypus was discovered in Australian backwaters by westerners in 1797, long after aborigines had cultivated a spiritual respect for the creature. When the first specimens were shipped to England, scientists tried to pry off the bill, because they were convinced it was a graft...

Author: By Philip Weiss, | Title: Platypus Crackers | 12/18/1975 | See Source »

Harvard sent an expedition to Australia in 1931-32 and on February 27, 1932, in Dorrigo, New South Wales, the group trapped one fine dark-furred platypus. He--for it is a he, as he has poison spurs on his back legs--now rests in taxidermic peace, beneath the stupor of paradiethylchloride, with 12 of his fellows in the bottom rack of a huge case of monotremes and marsupials on the fifth floor. It is an austerely bolted cabinet, anciently designed to preserve the skins mechanically if not chemically. The skins lie on great wooden beds that slide out with...

Author: By Philip Weiss, | Title: Platypus Crackers | 12/18/1975 | See Source »

...into billa-bongs [river pools] and replace the native species." Worse still, added John Lake, director of the Northern Territory's Department of Forestry, Fisheries, Wild Life and National Parks, "it would threaten our smaller native species-and that's equivalent to threatening the koala and the platypus...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Environment: The Bufo Plague | 8/5/1974 | See Source »

...Like the platypus, a semiaquatic, egg-laying mammal, this book should not work but does. It is part love story, part lecture in existential psychoanalysis, and part rumination on the frayed bootstraps of mankind. Altogether, Allen Wheelis' novel does far more than merely survive on its own terms in its own special territory...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: Sleeping Beauty | 5/11/1970 | See Source »

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