Deer-like creature missing link to whale

It sounds like a stretch, but a new study suggests that the missing evolutionary...

It sounds like a stretch, but a new study suggests that the missing evolutionary link between whales and land animals is an odd raccoon-sized animal that looks like a long-tailed deer without antlers.

The creature is called Indohyus, and recently dug up fossils reveal some crucial evolutionary similarities between it and water-dwelling cetaceans, like whales and dolphins.

For years, the hippo has been the leading candidate for the closest land relative because of its similar DNA and whale-like features. So some scientists were sceptical of the new hypothesis by an Ohio anatomy professor whose work was being published in the journal Nature.

Newer fossils point to the Indohyus. The animal is a 8220;missing link8221; to the sister species to ancient whales, said Hans Thewissen, anatomy professor at Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine.

8220;As a zoo animal, it looks nothing like a whale,8221; Thewissen said. But, he added, when it comes to anatomical features, the Indohyus 8220;is quite strikingly like one8221;.

Thewissen, who earlier published papers on fossils of what he called the first amphibious whale and the skeleton of the oldest known whale, studied hundreds of Indohyus bones unearthed from mudstone in the Kashmir region of India. From that cache of bones he created a composite skeleton of a 48 million-year-old creature.

The key finding connecting Indohyus to the whale is its thickened ear bone, something only seen in cetaceans. An examination of its teeth showed that the land-dwelling creature spent lots of time in the water and may have fed there, like hippos and whales. Also, the specific positioning and shape of certain molars connects Indohyus to the earliest whales, which are about 50 million years old, Thewissen said.

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8220;The earliest whales didn8217;t look like whales at all,8221; Thewissen said. 8220;It looked like a cross between a pig and a dog.8221; They lost their legs and ability to walk on land about 40 million years ago, he said.

And the Indohyus? 8220;A tiny little deer maybe the size of a raccoon and no antlers,8221; Thewissen said. India and Pakistan were the general region where early whales lived.

That matches with the Indohyus but not the early African hippos. While modern-day cetaceans are known to be smart, early whales and Indohyus had small brains, the researcher said.