Posted on 02/08/2005 3:50:43 AM PST by PatrickHenry
A group of four-footed mammals that flourished worldwide for 40 million years and then died out in the ice ages is the missing link between the whale and its not-so-obvious nearest relative, the hippopotamus.
The conclusion by University of California, Berkeley, post-doctoral fellow Jean-Renaud Boisserie and his French colleagues finally puts to rest the long-standing notion that the hippo is actually related to the pig or to its close relative, the South American peccary. In doing so, the finding reconciles the fossil record with the 20-year-old claim that molecular evidence points to the whale as the closest relative of the hippo.
"The problem with hippos is, if you look at the general shape of the animal it could be related to horses, as the ancient Greeks thought, or pigs, as modern scientists thought, while molecular phylogeny shows a close relationship with whales," said Boisserie. "But cetaceans – whales, porpoises and dolphins – don't look anything like hippos. There is a 40-million-year gap between fossils of early cetaceans and early hippos."
In a paper appearing this week in the Online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Boisserie and colleagues Michel Brunet and Fabrice Lihoreau fill in this gap by proposing that whales and hippos had a common water-loving ancestor 50 to 60 million years ago that evolved and split into two groups: the early cetaceans, which eventually spurned land altogether and became totally aquatic; and a large and diverse group of four-legged beasts called anthracotheres. The pig-like anthracotheres, which blossomed over a 40-million-year period into at least 37 distinct genera on all continents except Oceania and South America, died out less than 2 and a half million years ago, leaving only one descendent: the hippopotamus.
This proposal places whales squarely within the large group of cloven-hoofed mammals (even-toed ungulates) known collectively as the Artiodactyla – the group that includes cows, pigs, sheep, antelopes, camels, giraffes and most of the large land animals. Rather than separating whales from the rest of the mammals, the new study supports a 1997 proposal to place the legless whales and dolphins together with the cloven-hoofed mammals in a group named Cetartiodactyla.
"Our study shows that these groups are not as unrelated as thought by morphologists," Boisserie said, referring to scientists who classify organisms based on their physical characteristics or morphology. "Cetaceans are artiodactyls, but very derived artiodactyls."
The origin of hippos has been debated vociferously for nearly 200 years, ever since the animals were rediscovered by pioneering French paleontologist Georges Cuvier and others. Their conclusion that hippos are closely related to pigs and peccaries was based primarily on their interpretation of the ridges on the molars of these species, Boisserie said.
"In this particular case, you can't really rely on the dentition, however," Boisserie said. "Teeth are the best preserved and most numerous fossils, and analysis of teeth is very important in paleontology, but they are subject to lots of environmental processes and can quickly adapt to the outside world. So, most characteristics are not dependable indications of relationships between major groups of mammals. Teeth are not as reliable as people thought."
As scientists found more fossils of early hippos and anthracotheres, a competing hypothesis roiled the waters: that hippos are descendents of the anthracotheres.
All this was thrown into disarray in 1985 when UC Berkeley's Vincent Sarich, a pioneer of the field of molecular evolution and now a professor emeritus of anthropology, analyzed blood proteins and saw a close relationship between hippos and whales. A subsequent analysis of mitochondrial, nuclear and ribosomal DNA only solidified this relationship.
Though most biologists now agree that whales and hippos are first cousins, they continue to clash over how whales and hippos are related, and where they belong within the even-toed ungulates, the artiodactyls. A major roadblock to linking whales with hippos was the lack of any fossils that appeared intermediate between the two. In fact, it was a bit embarrassing for paleontologists because the claimed link between the two would mean that one of the major radiations of mammals – the one that led to cetaceans, which represent the most successful re-adaptation to life in water – had an origin deeply nested within the artiodactyls, and that morphologists had failed to recognize it.
This new analysis finally brings the fossil evidence into accord with the molecular data, showing that whales and hippos indeed are one another's closest relatives.
"This work provides another important step for the reconciliation between molecular- and morphology-based phylogenies, and indicates new tracks for research on emergence of cetaceans," Boisserie said.
Boisserie became a hippo specialist while digging with Brunet for early human ancestors in the African republic of Chad. Most hominid fossils earlier than about 2 million years ago are found in association with hippo fossils, implying that they lived in the same biotopes and that hippos later became a source of food for our distant ancestors. Hippos first developed in Africa 16 million years ago and exploded in number around 8 million years ago, Boisserie said.
Now a post-doctoral fellow in the Human Evolution Research Center run by integrative biology professor Tim White at UC Berkeley, Boisserie decided to attempt a resolution of the conflict between the molecular data and the fossil record. New whale fossils discovered in Pakistan in 2001, some of which have limb characteristics similar to artiodactyls, drew a more certain link between whales and artiodactyls. Boisserie and his colleagues conducted a phylogenetic analysis of new and previous hippo, whale and anthracothere fossils and were able to argue persuasively that anthracotheres are the missing link between hippos and cetaceans.
While the common ancestor of cetaceans and anthracotheres probably wasn't fully aquatic, it likely lived around water, he said. And while many anthracotheres appear to have been adapted to life in water, all of the youngest fossils of anthracotheres, hippos and cetaceans are aquatic or semi-aquatic.
"Our study is the most complete to date, including lots of different taxa and a lot of new characteristics," Boisserie said. "Our results are very robust and a good alternative to our findings is still to be formulated."
Brunet is associated with the Laboratoire de Géobiologie, Biochronologie et Paléontologie Humaine at the Université de Poitiers and with the Collège de France in Paris. Lihoreau is a post-doctoral fellow in the Département de Paléontologie of the Université de N'Djaména in Chad.
The work was supported in part by the Mission Paléoanthropologique Franco-Tchadienne, which is co-directed by Brunet and Patrick Vignaud of the Université de Poitiers, and in part by funds to Boisserie from the Fondation Fyssen, the French Ministère des Affaires Etrangères and the National Science Foundation's Revealing Hominid Origins Initiative, which is co-directed by Tim White and Clark Howell of UC Berkeley.
The problem is, the FLat Earth Society can read but they can't comprehend what they have read.. They sure seem to have problems even comprehending their own Bible, which they think they are taking literally, but which instead they are distorting for some weird anti-science agenda.
Heya, Doc!
Hey there. I nearly fell out of my chair when I read your post- I hadn't thought about the Christian Eating Machine in quite some time...
it isn't a Christian Eating Machine - it is an Innocent Mortal Mulcher!
I will admit to having developed this in direct response to having one too many evangelicals bother me at 3am while I was sitting in a diner enjoying my coffee, cigarettes, and notepad, but the Trial analogy applies to all humans in reference to the question of faith and damnation.
oh!
do you want on Da List?
Yes, please.
If you go over my remarks you'll find that I have never mentioned the Bible or creationism. I discount that human beings "descended" from animals.
Ok Hank, fair point. Science says we did. Good science using DNA and cladistics and other tools shows all sorts of connections and lines of descent among various species, humans included. That's what the science says.
Truth.
There is never a reason to lie to another. It is one of the Ten Suggestions. "Do not bear false witness".
If you tell people that nonsense is true, why would they ever believe you about the important stuff? How do you fundies hold everyone together with flood geology?
It is obviously the same type of pressure you try to put on me. Trying to "shame" someone into believing silliness so you can feel better about your own salvation! Hogwash!
I have Libronix and some ancient texts to go by. The basic way to tell is to study the Hebrew, which I have done in Genesis for over 15 years.
What would you call a fundie who believes literally everything in the Bible literally?
Has it occured to you that the fact that absolutely no scientific paper on evolution addresses the origin of life might actually be because evolution does not address the origin of life and it is not because we are lying about the actual scope of evolution?
What has occurred to me is that evolution is mathmatically impossible. Hence my example in post 664. To accept the theory that a species could evolve along certain paths, leaving the original species intact in the present day is to accept sheer lunacy.
If you really think that evolution requires an explanation for the origin of life, then it is up to you to explain exactly how the theory of evolution is falsified if the allegedly requisite method for the origin of life were to be proven impossible.
The reason evolution requires an explanation of the origins of life is because the evolutionist has to prove that the first simple single cell was able to write within its genetic structure a very complex set of instructions with all of the cellular codes for every living thing would evolve from it. And that is, as you well know, is impossible.
The best an evolutionist can do when confronted regarding the origins of life is ignore the beginning of life as if it doesn't matter, and try to shift the argument to somewhere near the middle.
echidna?
sick
Maybe to someone with limited reading comprehension.
Good answer & an interesting concept. Let's consider. The Young Earthers (of which I'm not) take over and start teaching in our public schools that there is a God, you are supposed to love your neighbor, and the earth is 6,500 years or so old. And that's a worst-case scenario, if I'm wrong and extremist on my side take over.
can you do me a favor?
please translate a phrase (listed below) into the oldest version of hebrew you know, and then give me a roman alphabet phonetic representation of it
phrase: "Do you understand me (or: "these words")?"
thanks in advance
No it didn't. Here's the closest it came:
If, as they say, the strata tell the story of countless aeons, it is strange that during those countless aeons the trilobite never produced anything but a trilobite
"If, as they say" is at best noncommittal. The author makes no affirmative suggestion (here or elsewhere) that "they" (i.e. geologists, both evolutionist and antievolutionist) say wrong.
Also consider the following passage (emphasis and bracketed comments are mine):
Genesis is admittedly not a scientific history. It is a narrative for mankind to show that this world was made by God for the habitation of man, and was gradually being fitted for God's children. So in a series of successive creative developments from the formless chaos, containing in embryonic condition all elemental constituents, chemical and mechanical, air, earth, fire, and water, the sublime process is recorded, according to the Genesis narrative in the following order:
- The creation by direct Divine act of matter in its gaseous, aqueous, terrestrial and mineral condition successively. (Gen. 1:1-10; cf. Col. 1:16; Heb. 11:3.)
- The emergence by Divine creative power of the lowest forms of sea and land life, (Gen. 1:11-13.)
- The creation by direct Divine act of larger forms of life, aquatic and terrestrial; the great sea monsters and gigantic reptiles (the sheretjim and tanninim). (Dawson, "Origin of the World," p. 213; Gen. 1:20-21.)
- The emergence by Divine creative power of land animals of higher organization, herbivore and smaller mammals and carnivore. (Gen. 1:24-25.)
- And finally the creation by direct Divine act of man. (Gen' 1:26, 27.) Not first but last. The last for which the first was made, as Browning so finely puts it. Herein is the comparability of Genesis and science, for this sublime order is just the order that some of the foremost of the nineteenth and twentieth century scientists have proclaimed. [In the contemporary context *all* of these "foremost" geologists held to the view that the earth is ancient. If you take a young earth view then there would be no point to highlighting this "comparability of Genesis and science".] It is remarkable, too, that the word for absolutely new creation is only used in connection with the introduction of life. (Gen. 1:1, 2, 27.) These three points where the idea of absolute creation is introduced are the three main points at which modern champions of evolution find it impossible to make their connection.
BTW, please do not post full articles in thread like this, unless the whole article is somehow directly relevant! But it is cool to have the link to full text of The Fundamentals online. Thanks. That's the same set I have, the red bound Baker edition.
Again, I remain pretty confident that there is not a single essay in The Fundamentals affirming the young earth position (and absolutely certain that none promote anything like "flood geology"). But feel free to try again.
Scientists say we came from animals. I say animals came from animals. Please spare me the the humans are animals lecture. God created each species complete and seperately. This is what I believe. I do not believe my sainted mother is just as much an animal as the beetle scurrying in my garden. She is a child of God. Scientists can overthink God's great creation all they want. I do notice people on here do really get their beards' in a knot defending evolution, must mean a lot to them.
You are correct that Sternberg was not fired as editor. He has, however, filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel alleging religious harrassment from his superiors based on his decision to publish the article and that is what Klinghoffer based his piece.
The rebuttals on The Panda's Thumb -- the blog to which ThinkPlease linked -- come from Jonathan Coddington and Randall Kremer, the Smithsonians's Director of Public Affairs. Obviously these are not objective sources
Now, can someone show how Meyer's article was not properly peer-reviewed?
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