Pictures of the order of marsupial moles | Order Notoryctemorphia facts(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
Notoryctemorphia is found in north and east central Western Australia, southern Northern Territory and western South Australia.
That Diprotodontia is associated with Notoryctemorphia is in contrast to the protamine P1 study where Diprotodontia is associated with Peramelemorphia (Retief et al.
The marsupialmoles are rare and poorly understood burrowing mammals of the deserts of western Australia.
The Notoryctemorphiaorder is represented by 1 family containing a single genus and species, Notoryctes typhlops; although some scientists recognize a second species, Notorcytes caurinus.
While they do tunnel and are highly adapted for this activity, Notoryctemorphia also spends a fair amount of time on the surface.
They possess fused vertebrae in the neck and a horny shield over the front of the head which together allows the animal to bore through the soil.
The mystery was not helped by the complete silence of the fossil record.
On the basis that marsupialmoles have some characteristics in common with almost all other marsupials, they were eventually classified as an entirely separate order: the Notoryctemorphia.
Molecular level analysis in the early 1980s showed that the marsupialmoles are not closely related to any of the living marsupials, and that they appear to have followed a separate line of development for a very long time, at least 50 million years.
Four main monophyletic lineages are found in analyses of these data.
These are the single genus ordersMicrobiotheria (Dromicopis australis) and Notoryctemorphia (Notoryctes typhlops - the Australian marsupialmole), a grouping of the American orders Didelphimorphia and Paucituberculata, and the Australasian species other than N.
Within Australasia, there are again four main monophyletic groups; the Dasyuridae, two bandicoot lineages (one comprised of pseudogene sequences which clusters with the numbat, Myrmecobius fasciatus) and the Diprotodontia (kangaroo, Australian possums, etc).
Monotremes are of great biological interest, as they are the only animals that lay eggs as well as having fur and suckling their young.
A single species of marsupialmole makes up the OrderNotoryctemorphia – a species completely unrelated to the placentalmoles that occur elsewhere in the world.
Marsupials have a number of unusual features and most conspicuous is the use of a pouch to carry the young (in several species, this is reduced to only a fold of skin).
