A whale with hooves

Who hasn't read about Moby Dick? Probably everyone read it, but few people wondered where the giant whales, similar to the work of Herman Melville, came from. But paleontologists have long been interested in this question. They dug deeper and deeper into the depths of millions of years, finding new evidence of land-based whales. At different times, a variety of hypotheses and assumptions about the origin of whales have been expressed - from hippos and camels to wolves and bears. But at the end of 2007, the world learned about one of the closest ancestors of whales - Indogius Indira.
It all started a few years ago when Indian geologist Rang Rao, while studying early Paleogene deposits (50-48 million years ago) in the Indian state of Kashmir, came across a fossil of an unknown animal, which in size was the size of a raccoon. The creature had hooves and it was obvious from everything that it was a herbivore, like deer or gazelles. But when scientists from the Ohio and Wyoming Universities of the USA, together with their colleagues from the Indian Institute of Technology and the Institute of Geology of the Himalayas, took up the study of the find, the world was amazed by their discovery. Even with a superficial examination of the skeleton, which, by the way, is quite well preserved, experts categorically stated that this small animal is no more and no less than the ancestor of such giants as whales. Scientists have noted several signs that, despite the obvious "artiodactyl" creatures inherent only in whales, are features of the structure of the bones of the inner ear and teeth. However, the most paradoxical thing is that the ancestor of whales was only 80 cm long, while the most modern whale is blue, reaches 33 m! In principle, Indogiuses cannot be called the direct great-grandfathers of whales, but they turned out to be the closest relatives of their ancestors who lived 2-3 million years earlier.
Previously, biologists believed that the ancestors of whales were forced to switch to an amphibian, and therefore to a completely aquatic lifestyle as a result of searching for food, but now they had to reconsider this opinion. It turns out that the Indogi and their closest relatives were driven into the water not by hunger, but by fear! The fact is that when analyzing the chemical composition of the teeth of Indogiuses, a radioactive isotope of carbon (carbon-13) was found, the percentage of which with ordinary carbon-12 is the same as that of their land contemporaries, but that of marine ones is completely different. From this, scientists concluded that the Indogius fed on land, and only escaped from its enemies in the water. According to their ecological characteristics, they resembled modern mouse-like deer. Indogi lived along the banks of rivers in the tropical forests of the island of India, surrounded by the shallow Tethys Sea (remnants of the Tethys Ocean). These were twilight animals that spent the whole day holed up in a hiding place, and came out to eat at nightfall. Obviously, everyone ate - from leaves and herbs to carrion and fish. Omnivorous indicates their evolutionary primitiveness, but living in the coastal zone, and spending considerable time in the reservoir, these animals have learned to catch aquatic invertebrates (mollusks, crustaceans, worms, insects, etc.), fish and amphibians. At first, the aquatic environment performed only the function of protection - in moments of danger, when a predator appeared, the Indogi escaped in the water, and only later they spent most of their time here. Interestingly, the limbs of the Indogiuses, when compared with the rest of the skeleton, are quite massive - they allowed the animals to easily dive into the water, performing the function of ballast.
Here is such an unusual denouement of the question of the origin of whales, which has occupied the brightest minds of biologists for many decades. 1xBet comenzó a operar en Rusia en el año de 2007, con una licencia de Curazao y con bases en la ciudad de Chipre. En 2019 fue cuando cobraron mayor fuerza y comenzaron a patrocinar equipos de fútbol famosos. Desde entonces Código Promocional 1xBet es un sitio buenísimo, donde encontrarás excelentes opciones para apostar, pero como todo, tiene algunas desventajas. Si aún no estás registrado, vas a encontrar un botón verde de registro desde cualquier sección del sitio en la que te encuentres. Debes dar click aquí para comenzar con tu proceso de registro y escribir tu información. Publicado el Categorías