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Published Online September 19, 2001
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1065305

Perspectives

Submitted on September 4, 2001
Accepted on September 6, 2001

The Ancestry of Whales

Kenneth D. Rose 1*

1 The author is in the Program for Functional Anatomy and Evolution, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, 21205,USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: kdrose{at}jhmi.edu.

Whales are mammals that moved to the sea some 50 million years ago. The question of who their ancestors were has vexed scientists for years. In his Perspective, Rose highlights the report by Gingerich et al., who report unusually well-preserved primitive whale fossils. Rose explains that these fossils reconcile morphological and molecular data for the first time, indicating that whales evolved from even-toed ungulates (hoofed animals) rather than mesonychians (an extinct group of carnivorous ungulates). However, inconsistencies remain, and it is not yet clear whether whales are the sister group of hippopotami or not.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
The position of Hippopotamidae within Cetartiodactyla.
J.-R. Boisserie, F. Lihoreau, and M. Brunet (2005)
PNAS 102, 1537-1541
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)