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Glite Dictionary
🦘 Relating to mammals 🐾 A type of mammal 🐺 Person as animal
therian

therian

9.9
A mammal like a kangaroo or human that gives birth to live young
  • noun
  • /ˈθɛriən/
  • Specialized
translation icon : teriano
  • The therians, which include both marsupials and placental mammals, have unique reproductive systems that differ significantly from those of monotremes.
  • ancestral therian

Examples

  • Thus, mammalian genomic imprinting is thought to have evolved after the therian-monotreme divergence.

    Blog text (26)

  • In vertebrates, imprinting is restricted to the therian (marsupial and eutherian) mammals, but as yet no imprinted genes have been identified in monotremes 1, 2.

    Blog text (26)

  • Many scientists study therians to understand the evolutionary adaptations that distinguish them from other mammal groups.

  • Characteristics such as live birth and complex parental care are common among species classified as therians.

Surface Forms

therian singular
therians plural

Morphology

therian = Theria (opaque) = Theria + an

Derived by adding the adjectival/noun-forming suffix '-an' to the taxon name 'Theria'; the term is technical and not transparently meaningful to general learners.

Etymology

Therian comes from the Greek therion, which means 'wild animal' or 'beast'. A therian is a mammal of the Theria group — an animal that gives live birth, like a kangaroo or a human, not an egg-laying monotreme.