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.
Hans Thewissen, Professor of the Department of Anatomy, Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy, has announced the discovery of the missing link between whales and their four-footed ancestors in the prestigious British journal Nature.
Scientists since Darwin have known that whales are mammals whose ancestors walked on land, and in the past 15 years, researchers led by Dr Thewissen have identified a series of intermediate fossils documenting whale's dramatic evolutionary transition from land to sea. But one step was missing: The identity of the land ancestors of whales.
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