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Murrayglossus hacketti
Sign in to saveAlso known as Zaglossus hacketti, Hackett's giant echidna
Murrayglossus is an extinct genus of echidna from the Pleistocene of Western Australia. It contains a single species, Murrayglossus hacketti, also called '''Hackett's giant echidna'. Though only from a few bones, researchers suggest that Murrayglossus was the largest monotreme to have ever lived, measuring around long and weighing around . Historically treated as a species of long-beaked echidnas, it was separated into its own genus Murrayglossus in 2022. The generic name combines the last name of paleontologist Peter Murray and glossus'', the Greek word for "tongue".
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Murrayglossus is an extinct genus of echidna from the Pleistocene of Western Australia. It contains a single species, Murrayglossus hacketti, also called '''Hackett's giant echidna'. Though only from a few bones, researchers suggest that Murrayglossus was the largest monotreme to have ever lived, measuring around long and weighing around . Historically treated as a species of long-beaked echidnas, it was separated into its own genus Murrayglossus in 2022. The generic name combines the last name of paleontologist Peter Murray and glossus, the Greek word for "tongue".
==Description== thumb|left|Restoration of a feeding individual At around long and weighing about , M. hacketti was the largest monotreme known to have existed. M. hacketti had longer, straighter legs than any of the modern echidnas. Augee (2006) speculates that this feature made the animal more adept at traversing through thickly wooded forests. The main diagnostic characteristics of genus Murrayglossus are a set of femoral traits: a low femoral head; the very low position of the lesser trochanter relative to head (situated directly below the internal margin of the femur); the large trochanter that has a high position relative to the head; a flared medial epicondyle; and obliquely oriented condyles.