Murrayglossus
Murrayglossus is a genus in the family Tachyglossidae. It contains a single species, Murrayglossus hacketti, the giant echidna, an extinct species of echidna from Western Australia that is dated to the Pleistocene. It is known only from a few bones. It was about 1 m (3.3 ft) long and probably weighed about 30 kg (66 lb). This makes it the largest monotreme known to have ever lived. 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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starts withAt around 1 m (3.3 ft) long, 0.6 m (2.0 ft) tall and about 30 kg (66 lb), 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.
