Whales once walked in Kashmir

NEW DELHI: The ancestors of whales once walked in Kashmir, scientists concluded after analysing a 48-million-year-old fossil of a fox-sized mammal.

A three-member team of researchers, including two from India, claim to have found the missing link between whales and land-based mammals.

A study of the fossil of Indohysus, a fox-sized mammal that probably waded in the water like a hippopotamus, was found in Kalakot region of Kashmir, the scientists reported in the latest issue of Nature.
   
The fossils help show how cetaceans, including whales, dolphins and porpoises might have evolved from even-toed hoofed mammals some 50 million years ago, it said.

The study was carried out by Sunil Bajpai of IIT Roorkee, B N Tiwari of the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehradun and US-based researcher Carl Buell Hans Thewissen.
   
The reseachers found similarities in the middle-ear space called the involucrum of the whale and Indohyus. "Before this, the involucrum had only ever been seen in cetaceans," the researchers said.
   
An analysis of the carbon and oxygen isotopes in the tooth enamel of the fossil reveal that the Indohyus fed on land-based plants. The finding indicates that the ancestors of whales were herbivores and took up meat eating after they became aquatic.
   
Another clue as to how Indohyus lived can be found in its limb bones, which were thickened and heavy in the same way that a hippo's are. "This suggests the animal was a wader, with heavy bones to help stop it from floating," they said.