Curator’s Choice: Skull of a Duck-billed Platypus

In life, the skull of this Duck-billed Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) contained a lot of sensing tools for finding prey underwater. The Y-shaped bones at the front supported a bill full of receptors, thousands of which could sense the electrical fields created by the movements of other animals in the water. Echidnas are the closest living relatives of the platypus – together they represent the order of monotremes. Monotremes are a subgroup of mammals, but they have some interesting things in common with reptiles, like laying eggs and having a cloaca. This skull is among the 44,000+ specimens curated by the Museum’s Department of Vertebrate Zoology, overseen by Curator of Vertebrate Zoology Krista Fahy, PhD.