When initial reports of a creature that combined the feet of an otter, the tail of a beaver and the bill of a duck arrived on ...

SYDNEY – Australia’s unique duck-billed platypus – an egg-laying, furry animal with web feet that spends most of its time underwater – is in fact part bird, part reptile and part mammal ...

A new study suggests the platypus and echidna — the only egg-laying mammals — had a water-dwelling ancestor. The finding could upend what’s known of their evolution.

Scientists may have gotten the evolutionary origins of some of the strangest animals on the planet backward. They’ve long thought that monotremes — egg-laying mammals that include the platypus and ...

In order to test the evolutionary relationships of Kryoryctes, we added it to a broader data set of 70 fossil and modern mammals. From there, we calculated an evolutionary tree.

SYDNEY, Australia - Scientists said they have mapped the genetic makeup of the platypus -- one of nature's strangest animals with a bill like a duck's, a mammal's fur and snake-like venom.