Magazines and television shows like to say that the platypus is a mix of different types of animals—part mammal, part reptile, part bird. How is that incorrect (at least in terms of morphology)?
What will be an ideal response?
All mammals are "part reptile" inasmuch as they all retain primitive amniote features that are common in living reptiles. Monotremes retain more of these features than therian mammals (e.g., a coracoid bone in the shoulder girdle) and also lack some derived therian features (e.g., a coiled cochlea in the inner ear). However, monotremes also share many derived, specifically mammalian features with therian mammals (e.g., the form of the ankle joint). The "bill" of the platypus is nothing like the bill of a bird: it is soft (rather than made of hardened keratin) and contains electroreceptive organs.
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