Study Suggests Whales May Be Related to Hippos

I find this so interesting! Wahles and Dolphins are amzing creatures that I have always had an interest in...

A second look at some 40-million-year-old fossils provides a "missing link" to suggest that the closest living relative of whales is the hippo, a group of scientists said on Monday.

They sure have no similarity today.....it's an interesting read...

story.news.yahoo.com.../nm/20050124/sc_nm/science_whale_dc

Cool, interesting read.

PS, like the new avatar

Its sometimes called the 'whippo hypothesis'. I think that its not the more widely accepted hypothesis tho, in that more workers suggest that they are related to mesonychids, an exctinct group now.


via nature (web text of the paper)

This tree shows a tree based on fossils and morphology compared to a tree based on genetic (obviously excluding fossils), the genetic evidence being the basis for the 'whippo hypothesis' (at least in 2000 when this was published0.

The difference between the two is imporant to biology also. Notice, in the morphology based tree on the left, the group called arteriodactyls are all related to a common ancestor, and that the group name applies to all descendants of that ancestor. This is a "monophyletic" group, its a real world actual group, as opposed to made up ones. On the tree on the right, the name arteriodactyls is applied to the same animals (because, well, thats what the name is for) but, if you look at the lines for hte relationship, some of the descendants of that arterio groups ancestors are not included, there is a split , hippos are shown more closely related to whales than to other artiodactyls, but whales arent artiodactyls. If that is correct, then arteriodactyls, despite all appearances, are a made up group of animals, or at least not a natural group, its one that has no biological reality and only exists in human lanaguage.

Most of modern systematics (sorting out relations and classifying animals) is focused on determining which groups are monophyletic (ie, are reptiles monophyletic, or, here is a monophyletic group, what should it be called?).

I'm sure this is going to get me labled as a creationist but that's far from the truth. I like to think of myself as a proponent of real science instead of observational based theories of pseudoscience created over a hundered years ago which tend to contradict all modern science. I'm not saying I know better but I'd like to see DNA research to back this up. Darwanism was basically created through logical assumption, often a good source of answers, however when we're dealing with somthing as complex as genetics I think we should stick with the hard facts of DNA sequencing and genetic mapping. These so called Evolutionary Trees we see all the name fail to mention the massive gaps of time between seemingly related animals.

The main problem here is that people are so vehemently opposed to any questioning of Darwanism that they ignore and reject any evidence to the contrary. They'd rather base their assumptions on "Well, this kind of looks like a horse" As opposed to "The dna of this creature has almost nothing in common with the creature said to be evolved from the first creature". Darwanism was origanally presented as a theory in need of further scientific testing, which used to be the scientific method, theory>testing>revision>testing>revision>testing ad neauseum until the theory is either proven or thrown out based on the law of Occum's Razor. Ad hoc and a posteriori theories are not scientifically viable, science used to be based on facts, not on conjecture and who can yell louder. Now before I'm flamed out of here let me present these qoutes on the need to revise the Darwanist theory:

Fifteen years ago molecular biologists working under Dr Morris Goodman at Michigan University decided to test this hypothesis. They took the alpha haemoglobin DNA of two reptiles -- a snake and a crocodile -- which are said by Darwinists to be closely related, and the haemoglobin DNA of a bird, in this case a farmyard chicken.

They found that the two animals who had _least_ DNA sequences in common were the two reptiles, the snake and the crocodile. They had only around 5% of DNA sequences in common -- only one twentieth of their haemoglobin DNA. The two creatures whose DNA was closest were the crocodile and the chicken, where there were 17.5% of sequences in common -- nearly one fifth. The actual DNA similarities were the _reverse_ of that predicted by neo-Darwinism. 5

Even more baffling is the fact that radically different genetic coding can give rise to animals that look outwardly very similar and exhibit similar behaviour, while creatures that look and behave completely differently can have much in common genetically. There are, for instance, more than 3,000 species of frogs, all of which look superficially the same. But there is a greater variation of DNA between them than there is between the bat and the blue whale.

Further, if neo-Darwinist evolutionary ideas of gradual genetic change were true, then one would expect to find that simple organisms have simple DNA and complex organisms have complex DNA.

In some cases, this is true. The simple nematode worm is a favourite subject of laboratory study because its DNA contains a mere 100,000 nucleotide bases. At the other end of the complexity scale, humans have 23 chromosomes which in total contain 3,000 million nucleotide bases.

Unfortunately, this promisingly Darwinian progression is contradicted by many counter examples. While human DNA is contained in 23 pairs of chromosomes, the humble goldfish has more than twice as many, at 47. The even humbler garden snail -- not much more than a glob of slime in a shell -- has 27 chromosomes. Some species of rose bush have 56 chromosomes.

The qoute is from an article on "Alternative Science" and can be found at the following link www.alternativescience.com...

Originally posted by Shadowflux
I'm sure this is going to get me labled as a creationist but that's far from the truth. I like to think of myself as a proponent of real science instead of observational based theories of pseudoscience created over a hundered years ago which tend to contradict all modern science. I'm not saying I know better but I'd like to see DNA research to back this up.

What part of genetics do you think has nothing to do with DNA? One tree was morphological based, the other genetics based.

scientific testing, which used to be the scientific method, theory>testing>revision>testing>revision>testing ad neauseum until the theory is either proven or thrown out based on the law of Occum's Razor.

This is an odd understanding of science, certainly not one that any scientists lay claim to. Theories are not revised until proven. "Occam's Razor" simply states that, when all other considerations are equal and don't allow one to distinguish between two theories, the simplest theory is the one that should be chosen. Its not allways used.

There is already a lengthy thread on the rest of your subject, search under "Creationist Confusion", that would be the sensible place to discuss the rest.

I have to say hippos and manatees must be a close relative. They look so similar in a lot of ways and since hippos love the water already it makes perfect sense to me that they are relatives.