He added, "Lizards and frogs lay eggs, so the idea of a mammal laying eggs was dismissed by many people-I think they felt it was degrading to be related to animals that they considered 'lower life forms.'"įor 85 years, European naturalists had been attempting to find proof that platypuses and echidnas lay eggs-including by asking Aboriginal Australians-but any results they sent home were ignored or dismissed. ![]() "In the nineteenth century, many conservative scientists didn't want to believe that an egg-laying mammal could exist, because this would support the theory of evolution-the idea that one animal group was capable of changing into another," said Ashby. The newly discovered collection of little jars represents the huge scientific endeavor that went into solving this mystery. The question of whether some mammals lay eggs then became one of the biggest questions of 19th-century zoology, and hotly debated in scientific circles. Until Europeans first encountered platypuses and echidnas in the 1790s, it had been assumed that all mammals give birth to live young. Ashby's investigations confirmed this was indeed the case. He added, "I knew from experience that there isn't a natural history collection on Earth that actually has a comprehensive catalog of everything in it, and I suspected that Caldwell's specimens really ought to be here." He was right: Three months after Ashby asked Collections Manager Mathew Lowe to keep an eye out, a small box of specimens was found in the museum with a note suggesting they were Caldwell's. ![]() But to have the physical specimens here, tying us back to that discovery almost 150 years ago, is pretty amazing," said Ashby. "It's one thing to read the 19th-century announcements that platypuses and echidnas actually lay eggs. The exciting find was made when Jack Ashby, Assistant Director at the museum, was doing research for a new book on Australian mammals. ![]() This unique collection had not been catalogued by the museum, so until recently staff had been unaware of its existence. At the time of their collection, these specimens were key to proving that some mammals lay eggs-a fact that changed the course of scientific thinking and supported the theory of evolution.
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