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From land to water: The origin of whales, dolphins, and porpoises. Evolution: Education & Outreach 2:272-288. Compared to other early whales, like Indohyus and Pakicetus, Ambulocetus looks like it lived a more aquatic lifestyle. Its legs are shorter, and its hands and feet are enlarged like paddles.
Although whales are expert swimmers and perfectly adapted to life underwater, these marine mammals once walked on four legs. Their land-dwelling ancestors lived about 50 million years ago.
Whales, dolphins, and porpoises together constitute the Cetacea (English: cetaceans). All modern Cetacea live in water and cannot survive out of the water. In spite of this, cetaceans are mammals.
Whales and their kin evolved from land-dwelling mammals, a transition that entailed major physiological and morphological changes — which geneticists have begun to parse.
Today, we know cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) descended from terrestrial mammals called artiodactyls, a group including even-toed ungulates like pigs, giraffes, and hippos.
Blubber, blowholes and flukes are among the hallmarks of the roughly 80 species of cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) alive today. But, because they are mammals, we know that they must...
Whales and their kin evolved from land-dwelling mammals, a transition that entailed major physiological and morphological changes—which geneticists have begun to parse.
Though they have a fishlike body, cetaceans (a group comprised of whales, dolphins, and porpoises) are mammals that descended from land-dwelling ancestors – same as cats, dogs, mice, elephants, cows, and humans!
The story of whales’ evolution from land mammals is hidden in their genes. The oceans are thought to be where life started but about 50-million years ago, something incredible happened: some...
These winsome little limbs—perfectly formed yet useless, at least for walking—are a crucial clue to understanding how modern whales, supremely adapted swimming machines, descended from land...