Word: platypuses
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...biologists in attendance took an intense interest in Temple-Smith's investigations. Farish A. Jenkins, Jr., professor of Biology and curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, was especially perplexed by the manner in which the platypus walks--on its knuckles, as shown in a film that Temple-Smith had brought with him. "That running around on their knuckles is something else," he said, shaking his head. "That knuckle-walking bothers me," he added. "I don't know why it should do that...
Temple-Smith agreed that if the platypus is compared with its only closest evolutionary relative, the echidna, the gaits don't match. "How do you reconcile these things?" Jenkins, who has studied the echidna's walk, asked. Temple-Smith responded, "When you look at the echidna, you're looking at a very different kettle of fish...
Jenkins keeps an echidna named Frances on the second floor of the new MCZ labs. He has been studying the locomotion of the echidna, which is a Mesozoic mammal. So is the platypus, but before Jenkins makes conclusions about those early mammals, he says he has to determine what makes them living fossils. "The difficulty in using these as analogs for Mesozoic mammals is that on top of their primitive features are a whole range of specialized features related to their aquatic and fossorial [digging] functions," Jenkins says...
...chips and rocks that Schaff brought back has slowly yielded a Mesozoic mammal, and a distinctive feature of the animal is what appears to be a poison spur on the back foot. Schaff says of the spur that he is "groping for something to compare it with." Thus the platypus. Schaff and Jenkins have collaborated on the work, and amid the litter of clay and tools in the lab is at least one Ornithorhynchus Anatinus skeleton, on loan from the dark racks of the fifth floor...
Edie Rutzmoser, the associate curator of the fifth floor, says that it is not likely that any more platypus skeletons or skins will be coming in within the near future. The department is somewhat strapped for money and personnel, she explains. Somewhere, she says, the department also has a few "alcoholics," or pickled specimens, but she is not sure what has become of them. They might have been thrown away, she says. The embargo on more platypuses, she says, is almost guaranteed by the strict laws Australia has against killing the creatures...