New research into one of Australia’s most specialised and bizarre animals has revealed the marsupial mole’s biology is as unusual as its appearance.
University of Melbourne researchers, who led the study, extracted DNA from a museum specimen then sequenced and analysed its genome to uncover the evolutionary secrets of the golden-haired species, about which “almost nothing is known”.
Despite the animal’s striking resemblance to “true” moles from Africa and parts of the northern hemisphere, marsupial moles are most closely related to bandicoots and bilbies, the study in Science Advances said.
The species also possessed an additional gene for haemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen around the body, which the researchers said could be an adaptation to living underground in low-oxygen conditions.
Dr Stephen Frankenberg, who specialises in reproductive biology and genetics and was the lead author of the study, said the analysis showed the species probably lost its eyesight progressively over millions of years, with the lens deteriorating first, then colour vision.
Many questions remained unanswered, he said.
Known as “itjaritjari” to Indigenous Aṉangu people, marsupial moles can today be found in north-western, central and southern Australia.
Their ancestors probably emerged from rainforests in north Queensland, due to the discovery of a 20m-year-old fossil from the Riversleigh world heritage area, described by Mike Archer, a professor at the University of New South Wales.
“The marsupial mole is only one of many kinds of animals we’re finding that have modern representatives in desert environments, dry environments and yet had their ancestors in rainforest,” said Archer, who was not involved in the University of Melbourne study.
His research analysing the mole’s fossil ancestor also indicated bandicoots were likely to be a close living relative.
Dr Sean Buckley, a molecular ecologist at Edith Cowan University, who was not involved in the study, said the species was “super elusive” and “not well studied” given researchers could “rarely find them in the wild.”
Marsupial moles were unlike any other animal, he said. “They’re almost the perfect poster child for the sort of fantastic and bizarre fauna we have in Australia, and why it’s so important to conserve them.”
