The largest animal on Earth floats from the depths of the oceans, but 50 million years ago whales walked on four feet to the ground.
A professor at Northeast Ohio Medical University has revealed that giant animals are the offspring of an ancient ‘small deer’, known as indohis.
Hans Thuvisen found a 47-million-year-old fossil in Pakistan featuring a stocky, fox-shaped animal with an elongated body and a tail, through research into the Citacean Evolution, which includes wheels to hippopotamuses.
The bones stuck in the mud layer characterize modern day whales – the middle-ear space and a bone on the skull structure.
Thuvison and his team also determined that the Indohyus, like hippopotamuses, would wrap themselves in water in search of food and as a means of avoiding predators, causing them to migrate from land to a complete aquatic lifestyle.
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The largest animal on Earth floats from the depths of the oceans, but 50 million years ago whales walked on four feet on the surface. A professor at Northeast Ohio Medical University has revealed that giant animals are descendants of an ancient ‘small deer’, known as the Indohis
Since Darwin, scientists have learned that whales are descended from mammals that once walked on land, but that has remained a mystery.
However, the missing link was found together when Tivision and his team uncovered a fossil in Pakistan.
It was cemented in a layer of mud stone found in the Kashmir region of India containing hundreds of bones of an Indohis.
Scientists described the skeleton as ‘a fox-sized mammal that looked like a miniature deer.’
Hans Thuvisen discovered that Pakistan had a 47-million-year-old fossilized elongated body and a stocky animal with tails.
Bones stuck in a layer of mud characterize modern day whales – a bone on the middle-ear space and the structure of the skull
Analysis After deep analysis, the researchers found similarities between the skull and the ears of both indohis and whales.
They determined that the skeletal bones of the Indohis had a thicker outer layer than other mammals in the shape of bones.
This characteristic is always found in mammals that are slow aquatic waders, such as the hippopotamus today.
‘We think they were sitting in the water waiting for a prey to drink like a crocodile,’ Thivsen told Discovery Magazine.
The aquatic habits of the Indohis are confirmed by the chemical composition of their teeth, which revealed an oxygen isotope ratio similar to that of aquatic animals – all of which tend to spend most of their time in water.
Thuvignon and his team also determined that the Indohis filled water, such as the hippopotamus, in search of food, and as a means of repelling predators, which eventually migrated from land to a complete aquatic lifestyle.
Prior to these findings, it was speculated that whales descended from carnivorous ancestors, who went into aquatic lifestyles to feed on sea fish.
There was also bone in the middle-ear space of the fossilized skull, which is also found in cetaceans.
And the eye sockets sat on the top of the head of the Indohis – like the placement of a whale’s eyes.
The team from Thaivizan looked at the teeth of Indohis, to find out what to eat.
The levels of different carbon and oxygen isotopes in the tooth enamel of land-dwelling animals vary due to the different isotope formations in food and water present in aquatic animals.
The teeth of the indosius have high levels of the carbon-13 isotope, typical of a water-filled whale from the eosin, suggesting that it is fed on land-based plants instead.
“We want to know in more detail what to eat,” Thivsen said. ‘Isotopes found in teeth indicate that it was not immersed in vegetation. We will study it in the future. ‘
Another clue to how Indohis lived can be found in the bones of his limbs, which, like the hippo, were thick and heavy.
This indicates that the animal was a wader, with heavy bones to prevent it from floating.
Based on this evidence, Thivison suggests that whale ancestors took to the water as a hunter-gatherer method, and no specific aquatic food was developed until later.
Jonathan Gisler, a paleontologist at Georgia Southern University in Statesbury, had previously identified a link between a roe lead and a whale, but his evidence was based solely on a small piece of tooth. He says this new work strengthens the link.
“What’s really important about these fossils is that they confirm the idea that the ancestors of the Cetaceans became semi-aquatic before developing special teeth to eat fish,” says Gessler.
The first ancestors of whales emerged 42 million to 48 million years ago, resembling the Thivison sea lions.
The Balinese whale then came about 41 million years ago, including the ancestors of humpbacks and blue whales.
This was followed by toothed whales about seven million years later, which still float in the oceans today.
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