Monotreme Party

In looking for  new animal this week we are going out of our normal range and into the time of the mammals. Becoming extinct approximately 50,000 years ago during the Pleistocene, the tachyglossid (a group that includes the extant genera of Echidnas) Megalibgwillia consists of two species, M. ramsayi (Owen, 1884) and M. robusta (Dun, 1896), and represents the oldest known echidna genus found. Both species are often referred to as the "giant echidna" but recent evidence shows that they are approximately the same size as the largest living echidnas rather than immense fossil animals, respective to extant echidna. Both species are represented by largely complete fossils and, because we know basically what the animals looked like, we can state that they were most likely as bizarrely intriguing as extant echidnas.