The new study shows that the platypus has the genes for caseins (milk proteins) which map in a way that corresponds to the protein mapping in humans. For instance, the platypus does produce true milk (although it doesn’t have true nipples). The study also explains the emergence of the many odd features of the platypus. The study found that the platypus genome contains both reptilian and mammalian elements. It was conducted by Wesley Warren of Washington University in St. The Nature article describes the findings of a study analyzing the genome of the platypus. The semi-aquatic monotreme is a venomous, duck-billed mammal that lays eggs, nurses it’s young and occupies a lonely twig at the end of a sparse branch of the vertebrate evolutionary tree. Seemingly assembled from the spare parts of other animals. The issue of Nature(articles available online only to subscribers) announces: “Top Billing for Platypus at End of Evolution Tree.” The article starts out by describing the platypus, one of nature’s oddest creatures: But some life forms are more obviously transitional than others and no currently living animal is more obviously transitional than the platypus. We’re all on the way to something else, at least those of us who will leave biological offspring. In a post in which I described Shubin’s book ( Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5 Billion Year History of the Human Body (2008)), I argued that every life form is a transitional life form. Neil Shubin recently published a book celebrating the discovery of a life form that clearly constitutes a transitional life form: tiktaalik, a fish that crawled out of the water by use of its rudimentary limbs.
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