What is "marsupial mole"

n. small burrowing Australian marsupial that resembles a mole [syn: pouched mole, Notoryctus typhlops]

| name = Marsupial moles | image = Kret workowaty.jpg | fossil_range = Miocene to Recent | regnum = Animalia | phylum = Chordata | classis = Mammalia | infraclassis = Marsupialia | superordo = Australidelphia | ordo = Notoryctemorphia | ordo_authority = Kirsch, in Hunsaker, 1977 | familia = Notoryctidae | familia_authority = Ogilby, 1892 | genus = Notoryctes | genus_authority = Stirling, 1891 | subdivision_ranks = Species | subdivision = N. typhlops
N. caurinus | range_map = Marsupial mole distribution map.svg

Marsupial moles are a family (Notoryctidae) of cladotherian mammals of the order Notoryctemorphia. They are rare and poorly understood burrowing mammals of the deserts of Western Australia, with an ancestry going back 20 million years or so. Once classified as monotremes, they are now thought to be marsupials. Their precise classification was for long a matter for argument, but there are considered to be only two extant species:

• Notoryctes typhlops (southern marsupial mole, known as the itjaritjari by the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people in Central Australia).
• Notoryctes caurinus (northern marsupial mole, also known as the kakarratul)

The two species are so similar to one another that they cannot be reliably told apart in the field.

Marsupial moles spend most of their time underground, coming to the surface only occasionally, probably mostly after rains. They are blind, their eyes having become reduced to vestigial lenses under the skin, and they have no external ears, just a pair of tiny holes hidden under thick hair. It is debated whether or not marsupial moles dig permanent burrows or simply fill their tunnels in behind them as they move.