Evolution of cetaceans. The cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) are descendants of land-living mammals, and remnants of their terrestrial origins can be found in the fact that they must ...

Diving into the depths. The first cetaceans lost a lot more than legs when they went back to the water: Entire genes became nonfunctional. In the vast of book of genetic letters that make up a ...

Pathogen pressure. Early cetaceans faced another challenge when they started swimming: billions of tiny germs. Compared with air, aquatic habitats are a funky stew of viruses, bacteria, and other ...

The earliest cetaceans are known from fossils found in Pakistan and India. The cetacean species Pakicetus lived about 50 million years ago and was a wolf-sized, four-legged land animal that lived ...

Whales originated from land animals that looked like pigs, but changes in their inner ear helped them evolve into acrobatic swimmers, British scientists reported in the May 9 issue of Nature.

The evolution of modern cetaceans (including whales, dolphins, and porpoises) from terrestrial ancestors required many drastic anatomical, physiological, and behavioral changes. The development of an ...

However, unlike their land-dwelling relatives, cetaceans have undergone profound changes in their body and skeletal structure ...

Convergence and constraint in the cranial evolution of mosasaurid reptiles and early cetaceans. Paleobiology , 2022; 1 DOI: 10.1017/pab.2022.27 Cite This Page : ...

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and natural selection isn't an idea with holes. ... Scientists think the animal belonged to a group related to cetaceans such as Ambulocetus natans.

These were among the changes that allowed cetaceans to become fully aquatic in as little as eight million years, which is extraordinarily fast in evolutionary terms. Around 38 million years ago, the ...

Evolution saved us from the terrifying prospect. Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Search for: ...