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Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Whales Descended from....... an Ancient Creature???

The Latest About the Whales

I read the latest news about whales being descended from small deer-like creature. The site I got the story from said , and I quote
" A new study suggests that the missing evolutionary link between whales and land-animals is an old raccoon-sized animal that looks like a long-tailed deer without antlers. Or an overgrown long-legged rat."
The overgrown long-legged rat is called Indohyus and had similarities between it and the water-dwelling whales, dolphins and porpoises. This was revealed in the recently dug up fossils. The researchers at Ohio Universities College of Medicine found out that the Indohyus are "missing link" to the sister species to ancient whales. These researchers studied hundreds of Indohyus bones unearthed from mudstone in Kashmir region of India and created a composite skeleton of a 48 million-year-old creature. The connection between the Indohyus and the earliest whales are its thickened ear bone, shape and position of certain molars.
The researchers think and I quote
"the earliest whales didn't look like whales and they look like a cross between a pig and a dog, they lost their legs and ability to walk on land about 40 million-years ago".
The researchers said that the earliest whales lived in the general region of India and Pakistan, and matched up with the Indohyus but not the early African hippos.(tiny fact: Early whales and Indohyus have small brains). Other researchers were intrigued, but they wanted more proof. A professor had said that there needs to be further testing, especially since other recent studies have suggested both hippos and Raoellids were involved in whale ancestry. The researchers say that there were problems with the preserved fossils and says that Indohyus makes a strong case as the closest land ancestor.I think that this is an interesting case about the whales, but there has to be more evidence to prove these conclusions.