prototherian

comparative more prototherian · superlative most prototherian

1. Belonging or pertaining to the subclass Prototheria.

   In his classification of prototherian mammals Hopson (31) queried the allocation of Haramiyidae to the Multituberculata and suggested that multituberculates were derived from a morganucodontid ancestry.

   1970, William A. Clemens, “Mesozoic Mammalian Evolution”, in Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, volume 1, page 363

   2 more examples

   It is evident that the Edentates are widely separated from all other existing Eutherians; and Professor W. K. Parker, in view of the tendency to a variation in the number of cervical vertebræ and other features, has suggested a separate origin from a Prototherian stock.

   1889, Henry Alleyne Nicholson, Richard Lydekker, A Manual of Palæontology, 3rd edition, William Blackwood and Sons, page 1290

   […]the modern remaining prototherian lines are the Australian and New Guinean monotremes, egg-laying mammals now represented by the grub- and shrimp-eating platypus (Ornithorhyncus) and ant-eating echidna (Tachyglossus and Zaglossus).

   2000, Monroe W. Strickberger, Evolution, third edition, Jones and Bartlett Publishers, pages 446–447

plural prototherians

1. Any of the egg-laying mammals of the subclass Prototheria; a monotreme.

   Monotremes (prototherians), which include the duck-billed platypus, and short- and long-beaked echidnas, have a cloaca—a single opening for the fecal, urinary, and reproductive tracts.

   1999, George A. Feldhamer, Mammalogy: Adaptation, Diversity, and Ecology, McGraw-Hill, →ISBN, page 192