An Earth platypus.
A platypus was an animal found in Australia and Tasmania. The animal is unique, a mammal, but one that laid eggs and had a bill.
It was classified as a marsupial. (NF novel: Restoration)
Bajor had no animal that resembled the platypus. (DS9 novel: Original Sin)
A similar animal existed on at least one other planet. (TOS comic: "Space Ark")
History[]
In 2228 on Elysium, Christopher Pike spotted an animal that had the bill of a platypus along with the features of a rat and a kangaroo. (TOS novel: Burning Dreams)
In the 2260s, an animal epidemic on Earth wiped out the platypus and several other wildlife species. The USS Enterprise was assigned to retrieve representatives of those species living on other worlds in order to repopulate them on Earth. The Enterprise crew brought back members of the platypus species, along with bear, camel, chimpanzee, hippopotamus, kangaroo, leopard, parrot, rhinoceros, turtle, tiger and zebra. (TOS comic: "A Book to Color, third story")
The Enterprise discovered a spotted, blue type of platypus in the jungle of an unnamed planet threatened by a supernova and relocated a pair of them to another world. (TOS comic: "Space Ark")
In 2370, Q claimed to have created the platypus. (TNG novel: Q-Squared)
In 2376, in an attempt to clear his mind during a life-threatening situation, Mark McHenry calculated pi, retconned a solution to plot contradictions in a series of novels, and wondered about the origin of the platypus. He considered the ramifications of whether a higher power had created the animal as a joke: who would have done it, and what did it say about the nature of the universe. (NF novel: Requiem)
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