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.
Ok, from the search of Wikipedia:
In 1900, with $150,000 (51%) from J. Pierpont Morgan, Tesla began planning the Wardenclyffe Tower facility. In June 1902, Tesla's lab operations were moved to Wardenclyffe from Houston Street. Among the various application of the 700-plus patents accumulated by Tesla, the most controversial today is his Wardenclyffe Tower. The tower was billed as the start of a global system for wireless telecommunications but was also intended by Tesla as a demonstration of wireless electrical power distribution. In 1903, upon hearing of Tesla's plans for wireless power transmission, Morgan refuses any more funding to support the Wardenclyffe Tower project.
Around 1916, Tesla filed for bankruptcy because he owed so much in back taxes. He was living in poverty.
Tesla started to exhibit pronounced symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder in the years following. He became obsessed with the number three. He often felt compelled to walk around a block three times before entering a building, demanded a stack of three folded cloth napkins beside his plate at every meal, etc. The nature of OCD was little understood at the time and no treatments were available, so his symptoms were considered by some to be evidence of partial insanity and this probably hurt what was left of his reputation.
At this time, he was staying at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, renting in an arrangement for deferred payments. Eventually, the Wardenclyffe deed was turned over to George Boldt, proprietor of the Waldorf-Astoria to pay a $20,000 debt.
Tesla died alone in the hotel New Yorker of heart failure, some time between the evening of January 5 and the morning of January 8, 1943. Despite selling his AC electricity patents, he was essentially destitute and died with significant debts.
Not exactly the kind of ease and relative luxury that I would care to go out with. Furthermore, I seriously doubt that folks really wanted to hang out with a guy at a party that has to walk around his chair three times before he can sit down.
Someone can correct me if I am mistaken, but I believe that the editor of that journal was fired mainly because he published that paper without it having gone through the normal peer review process. IOW, he wasn't fired for allowing an ID paper to be published. He was fired for giving special treatment to an ID paper so that it would get published when it otherwise wouldn't have.
Why didn't he use his free energy machine?
I do not mean to imply that all unexplained phenomena do not have natural explanations. Science will never stop discovery, thank goodness.
What I mean to point out is that true naturalists believe that there is no such thing as miracle. (what you referred to as magic)
BTW, miracle and magic are not the same. Magic is trickery that can be scientifically explained. Miracle is something divine which cannot be scientifically explained.
How do you reconcile the above statement with the below statement?
And he said unto the disciples, The days will come, when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it.And they shall say to you, See here; or, see there: go not after them, nor follow them.
For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven; so shall also the Son of man be in his day.
But first must he suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation.
And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.
They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.
Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;
But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.
Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed. Luke 17:22-30
Apparently this means that you believe in divine intervention.
I don't think he was fired. I think his term expired. It's possible he might have been given another term in the absense of the controversy.
It's clear he guided the paper through a nonstandard review and published it without noting the warnings of the reviewers.
I don't think his career should be destroyed by this. That would be counterproductive.
A volcano eruption?
He was not fired. He was a Research Associate at the Smithsonian, and is paid by the NIH, where he still works. His term as editor expired, he was not fired. But don't just believe me, read this rebuttal to Klinghoffer's piece in the WSJ, which was full of falsehoods here. You'll be surprised at the number of falsehoods in Klinghoffer's article.
...and I bet that you even believe that a human actually stepped foot on the moon.
Thanks for the correction. I was pretty sure, though, that he wasn't fired just because he dared to publish a paper dealing favorably with ID as was implied by the original poster.
HuH?
What experiment?
I believe it involved tinfoil.
I asked the question of someone who professes to be a Christian and presumably believes in the divinity of Christ based on the inerrant testimony of Scripture. If you don't believe that Scripture is given by inspiration of God, then your answer is irrelevant. You could have just as easily said the account of Sodom was written under the influence of mind altering mushrooms.
There were no mushrooms. God only created mineral plant and animal.
BTW, he also said Tesla had "free-energy" machine that big-money squashed.
Shoot, you keep bringing little ol' ME back into the fray. Wait till you see what I wrote to you next about going to the moon. You're REALLY gonna go through the roof!!
This is a hoot.
As an aside to WT and all the FReepers on this thread (I wasn't going to do this just because it was making Turkey so mad but I will anyway to see if he can calm down):
For those that missed it: I thought that the earth's moon was the only moon or planet in our solar system that did not spin it's face away from it's host. Turkey educated me as to the otherwise. (Thank you Turkey)
Also, Tesla himself claimed free energy, I didn't. (was he a 'real' scientist?)
Ok all, carry on....
999
1,000. Yet another prime number.
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