"This mix-and-match animal [the platypus] is more than just an oddity, though. Researchers report in Nature that its genome provides important clues into how mammals, birds and reptiles evolved from a common ancestor some 315 million years ago. And researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine report in Genome Research that they linked the evolution of a gene in the old platypus to a mutated version in humans responsible for moving the testes outside of the body and into an external pouch, or scrotum."

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=whats-...connection-to-t

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