Re: Morgan Tears 3.
Alex Duncan (aduncan@mail.utexas.edu)
30 Oct 1995 17:14:43 GMT
In article <1995Oct30.150745.9210@arl.mil> Troy Kelley,
tkelley@hel4.brl.mil writes:
>I thought someone posted that elephants had some kind of aquatic
>ancestor? Didn't you see that Alex? Perhaps some kind of seal and
>elephants share a common ancestor (the elephant seal mabe?).
> I would not be surprised to find that elephants have been aquatic at one
>time.
As I posted on another thread, the "potential aquatic ancestor" of
elephants is Moeritherium, and unless something pretty drastic has
changed in the last 5 years, Moeritherium is a distant sister taxon to
modern proboscideans. In other words, it's stretching things pretty
drastically to suggest a Moeritherium-like ancestor for extant
proboscideans. As far as later proboscideans go, we have about as much
evidence for their being aquatic as we do for hominids, i.e., none at all.
Alex Duncan
Dept. of Anthropology
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712-1086
512-471-4206
aduncan@mail.utexas.edu
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