Word.ws English Dictionary

prototherian

/ˌpɹoʊtɵˈθɪəɹi.ən/

prototherian adjective: belonging or pertaining to the subclass Prototheria.

prototherian: belonging or pertaining to the subclass Prototheria
Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Adjective

prototherian (comparative more prototherian, superlative most prototherian)

  1. Belonging or pertaining to the subclass Prototheria.
    • 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.1889, Henry Alleyne Nicholson, Richard Lydekker, A Manual of Palæontology, 3rd edition, William Blackwood and Sons, page 1290
    • 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.1970, William A. Clemens, “Mesozoic Mammalian Evolution”, in Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, volume 1, page 363

Noun

prototherian (plural prototherians)

  1. Any of the egg-laying mammals of the subclass Prototheria; a monotreme.
    • 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.1999, George A. Feldhamer, Mammalogy: Adaptation, Diversity, and Ecology, McGraw-Hill, →ISBN, page 192

Forms of prototherian

Adjective
comparativemore prototherian
superlativemost prototherian
Noun
pluralprototherians

Origin of prototherian

From translingual Prototheria + -an, from Ancient Greek πρωτο- (prōto-, “proto-, first”) + θηρίον (thēríon, “beast”).

Questions about prototherian

What does prototherian mean?
Prototherian means belonging or pertaining to the subclass Prototheria.
What part of speech is prototherian?
Prototherian can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce prototherian?
Prototherian is pronounced /ˌpɹoʊtɵˈθɪəɹi.ən/.

Words near prototherian in the dictionary

  1. prototheorid
  2. prototheorids
  3. protothere
  4. prototheres
  5. prototherial
  6. prototherian
  7. prototherians
  8. protothetic
  9. protothetics
  10. protothread
  11. protothreads

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: prototherian (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “prototherian.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/prototherian. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.