Re: Whales and Hippos

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> This is OLD news, as the fossils were discovered and published around ten
> years ago.

I've just read the Nature abstract (requires a free subscription:
http://www.nature.com/nlink/v413/n6853/abs/413277a0_fs.html). This does not
refer to *Pakicetus*, *Ambulocetus* etc., which are really old news, but to
_skeletons_ of *Ichthyolestes* and *Pakicetus* that were so far only known
from skulls AFAIK.

> While Cetacean/artyodactyl link has been confirmed since then, please note
> that the last common ancestor between flipper and hippos MUST date to the
> early Paleocene as
> Pakicetus, the amphibious "proto-whale" predates Diacodexis, the first
> documented artyodactyl by several million years.

Nobody claims to have found the last or any common ancestor. BTW, all these
whales are Early Eocene (47 Ma).

> It also predates hippos by tens of millions of years, thereby disproving
the
> existance of clade "whippomorpha."

Or hinting at a long ghost lineage for hippos. (What has become of
Anthracotheriidae?) The Nature paper "stops short of identifying any
particular artiodactyl family as the cetacean sister group and supports
monophyly of artiodactyls", while showing that Mesonychidae is farther away.