A little bit bird, a little bit mammal
…and a little bit rock’n'roll. On Thursday, the paper describing the platypus genome will be published in Nature. From an evolutionary standpoint, the platypus is quite an interesting species. It is a mammal, but it has traits of birds (lays eggs, has a bill) and reptiles (lays eggs, produces venom). Oh, and did I mention you can literally scare a platypus to death? You can learn more from NPR’s coverage, Platypus Is Even More Strange Than It Looks, including quotes from Rick Wilson, head of The Genome Center at Washington University.
Update: this story has been picked up by Slashdot and many other places (including the WU Record).
Posted in genomics |
Tagged with: evolution , genomics , science , wustl
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