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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.
1970, William A. Clemens, “Mesozoic Mammalian Evolution”, in Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, volume 1, page 363:
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.
2000, Monroe W. Strickberger, Evolution, third edition, Jones and Bartlett Publishers, →ISBN, pages 446–447:
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).
1999, George A. Feldhamer, Mammalogy: Adaptation, Diversity, and Ecology, McGraw-Hill, →ISBN, page 192:
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.
