Paddy Pallins of Sydney, we joined 

 Rosendo's team in an effort to find more of 

 this expatriate platypus and, delightfully, 

 unearthed two more teeth in the same 

 windswept area as the first. Although a bit 

 of a blow to Australian pride, we now have 

 to allow that platypuses, those biological 

 paradigms of the island continent, once 

 waddled, swam, and probably electrolo- 

 cated their way across the then-united 



lands of South America, Antarctica, and 

 Australia. 



What light do these spectacular fossils 

 shed on the mystery of monotreme rela- 

 tionships? Unfortunately and intriguingly, 

 not as much as we would like. If by 1 20 

 million years ago (the age of the Lightning 

 Ridge platypus), monotremes were al- 

 ready distinct as a group, we should be 

 searching the stream deposits of Jurassic 



Park, looking for older, more "primitive" 

 members of this group. But where? Con- 

 sidering the antiquity of monotremes in 

 Australia and the intermittent connections 

 between South and North America, could 

 a monotreme bill or beak be jutting out of 

 a Jurassic cliff somewhere in the United 

 States? Considering the rush of unex- 

 pected monotreme discoveries in the last 

 decade, we might be wise to wait and see. 



49 



