ABSTRACT
P a s c a l w a s exaggerating, of course, but his hyperbole would have been literally true of those much less conspicuous organs, the waitoreke’s teats. This animal, which has such cataclysmic implications, is a shy and ordinary-looking little beast. But it seems to be a mammal, and it is reported in New Zealand, the only country in the world, apart from small islands, that contains no indigenous mammals. There is geological evidence that New Zealand was joined to Australia only until the Jurassic period, when reptiles still ruled the world, and was cut off before the marsupial invasion in the middle of the following period; and there is the argument that not a single species of indigenous mammal has been found in New Zealand. If it should turn out that a hitherto undiscovered animal with teats inhabits that country, palaeogeographical reconstructions would have to be completely revised and the date of submergence of certain continental bridges would have to be changed by several tens of millions of years. For the waitoreke to reach New Zealand dryshod, the sea would have to have parted, as the Red Sea did for Moses, and closed again behind it in time to stop the advancing marsupials. Thus the face of the world at the beginning of the Cretaceous period literally depends on whether the waitoreke was a mammal. But was it? The creature is certainly
supposed to have fur - but in this part of the world even birds, like the kiwi and moa, look as if they are covered with hair.
