“Hammer-biter” marsupials were a weird mix of mammal and lizard

The marsupials and egg-laying mammal that are now found primarily in Australia defend a sort of evolutionary halfway ground , mixing together their mammalian feature of speech with those of reptile or amphibians . One ancient marsupial represents a particularly eldritch case of convergent phylogeny .

Malleodectes , otherwise bed by the awesome soubriquet “ the Hammer - Biter ” , was a marsupial that lived in Australia between 10 and 17 million years ago . Its teeth were shaped like hammer , a freaky feature that is found in only one go animate being : an Australian lounge lizard know as a skink ( pictured below ) . These lizard use their huge , oddly blunt teeth for one purpose , and that ’s what allowed the Queensland Museum researchers to fancy out why these ancient pouched mammal had them .

This ancient creature might have looked lizardy , or a morsel like this African tea - sized marsupial call a northerly quoll , above . Or like some flaky combining .

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Scott Hocknull explains :

“ This rainforest skink has an almost very giant , hammer - tooth in its teething and in this case we know what it ’s used for : crushing the strong case of snails , one of the independent intellectual nourishment of this rain forest skink .

Fellow research worker Rick Arena adds :

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“ At first , the subprogram of these teeth was a mystery because we were unaware of any other mammal that had hammer - teeth like this . It appears Malleodectes evolved millions of days ago to exploit the ecological niche occupied today by these specialised lizard . ”

This phenomenon is known as evolutionary convergence , in which two all separate species evolve the same solvent to the same canonical challenge . skink and the mallet - biters both made snail a primary part of their diet , and that was only potential if they could trounce their shell to get at the pith within .

This case of convergent phylogenesis is highly unusual . Arena says this is the first clip ever that a marsupial ’s tooth most resemble that of a lizard , and it ’s broadly rare for such distantly related animate being to apportion such similar adaption . Coauthor Mike Archer speculates that they did n’t just develop to eat the same food root – eventually , these two metal money might have compete for one circumscribed supply of snails :

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“ It ’s possible that coinage of Malleodectes may have survived for a bit longer in rainforest community in eastern Australia and here found themselves in competition for snail with the similarly - specialized ancestors of the pink - tongue skinks . If this did happen , clearly , for whatever rationality , these sinful mammalian lost out to the lizards . ”

ViaDiscovery News .

Northern quoll photo by Jonathan Webb

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