PBS Nova explained how a small, furry prehistoric four-legged, semi-aquatic carnivore called the Pakicetus was a direct ancestor to fully aquatic whales and dolphins. This was determined by a bone ...

Like stripping down to swim, the ancestors ... whales and dolphins with that of other mammals to find 236 genes missing from cetaceans. Of those missing genes, 85 are still present in ...

Pathways of evolutionary descent from now extinct ancestors have ... and peccaries; and hippopotamuses. Modern cetaceans don't have toes, but early fossil whales did have even numbered appendages.

Analysis of the previously unknown, long-extinct animal also confirms that cetaceans -- the group to which whales, dolphins ... even-toed hooves. Until now, the oldest known fossil of a hippo ...

The ancestors of dolphins and whales survived in the seas by shedding ... But this particular repair enzyme does messy work, introducing errors even as it fixes. Other, less mistake-prone enzymes ...

When cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises ... those that were turned off after cetaceans split from the ancestors of modern hippopotamuses but before toothed whales split from baleen ...

fully aquatic cetaceans -- the group that includes whales, dolphins, and porpoises -- and semi-aquatic hippopotamuses are each other's closest living relatives and share a common ancestor that ...

An ancestor of whales and hippos is likely ... Jean-Renaud Boisserie said in a statement. Cetaceans like whales, porpoises and dolphins don't resemble hippos, but there is a gap between their ...

The order of marine mammals called cetaceans, which includes whales, dolphins ... evidence that when the ancestors of modern cetaceans split off from the ancestors of hippopotamuses, 85 different ...

A 24-million-year-old fossil of a giant tusked dolphin lacks several features common to modern dolphins and baleen whales. The discovery shows that the common ancestor of dolphins and whales ...

A new species of early odontocete—or toothed whale—is giving us a closer look into what some of the earliest ancestors of present-day dolphins may ... and even extinct toothed baleen whales.

Hippopotamuses have ... a closer kinship with modern whales; but that proposition left a troubling 40-million-year gap between the oldest known ancestors of whales (55 million years ago), and ...