WASHINGTON — The gigantic ocean-dwelling whale may have evolved from a land animal the size of a small raccoon, new research suggests. What might be the missing evolutionary link between whales and land animals is an odd animal that looks like a long-tailed deer without antlers or an overgrown long- legged rat, fossils indicate.
The creature, called Indohyus, and recently unearthed fossils reveal some crucial evolutionary similarities between it and water-dwelling cetaceans, such as whales and dolphins.
For years, the hippo has been the leading candidate for the closest land relative because of its similar DNA and whalelike features. So some scientists were skeptical of the new hypothesis by an Ohio anatomy professor whose work appears today in the journal Nature.
Others have been troubled that hippos seem to have lived in the wrong part of the world and popped up too recently to be a whale ancestor. Newer fossils point to the Indohyus.
