llDayo

I was browsing at christianforums.com and came across THIS TOPIC. Apparently, the poster came across some very coincidental facts between the bodies of manatees and elephants. Another poster asked for a link to some sources to read about them but none were provided. So, does anyone here have something I could point them too (as well as read about myself)?

Berthold

The relationship between elephants and sirens has been well established by comparative anatomy,embryology and DNA analysis and may be considered as "textbook knowledge". Recently I have read "The Ancestor's Tale" by Richard Dawkins, where it is mentioned, although not elaborated upon.

Coragyps

The Animal Diversity Web might get you started. Not too much depth there, but it likely will give you links or terms to Google enough to keep you busy.

llDayo

Cool, thanks for the link! I'll definitely look into this more. I've already given them this link with props

European Hedgehog

I think that the common ancestry of elephants,manatees (and the hyrax) was first seriously noted by George Gaylord Simpson, way back in the 40-50's.

So, later on came amino acid sequencing and subsequently, RNA gene sequencing (and what else have you) and his inference turned out to be quite right.

Here´s an article regarding the embryology of- ;
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abst...=&FIRSTINDEX=0
It ought to be quite disturbing to a creationist.

Nic Tamzek

Well, that PNAS article puts it a bit strongly. Seems much more likely to me that the common ancestor of elephants and sirenians was semi-aquatic -- like modern elephants, hippos, and many other mammals (it was probably much more like a . If you look at elephant ancestors and extinct relatives, they have a variety of tusks and spoon-shaped mouths, probably for various digging purposes.



Moeritherium:


A modern analog might be a tapir:


It is not so wild to imagine something somewhat like this diverging into two lines, one going fully aquatic (sirenians), the other staying semi-aquatic (elephants).

A fossil of a *walking* sirenian has been found, by the way:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comd...ermediates_ex5

European Hedgehog

Yeah. I´d be led to think that it touches on the validity-, the justification for postulating related adaptive shifts.
Depending on physical/historical constraints, certain taxa could take to water quite readily without making too much of a mess about it (without recording too much of a modification in the fossil record).

Nic Tamzek

Another whale evolution pic:



I would really like to see Moeritherium, Pezosiren, and related critters compared side-by-side somewhere.