Kenyapotamus
Possible ancestor of living hippopotamuses
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kenyapotamus is an extinct genus of hippopotamid and possible ancestor of living hippopotamuses that lived roughly 16 million to 8 million years ago during the Miocene epoch. Its name reflects that its fossils were first found in modern-day Kenya.
| Kenyapotamus Temporal range: | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Infraclass: | Placentalia |
| Order: | Artiodactyla |
| Family: | Hippopotamidae |
| Subfamily: | †Kenyapotaminae |
| Genus: | †Kenyapotamus Pickford, 1983[1] |
| Species | |
|
K. coryndoni and | |
Although little is known about Kenyapotamus, its dental pattern bore similarities to that of the genus Xenohyus, a European suid from the Early Miocene. This led some scientists to conclude that hippopotami were most closely related to modern peccaries and suids.[2]
Recent molecular research has suggested that hippopotamuses are more closely related to cetaceans than to other artiodactyls. A morphological analysis of fossil artiodactyls and whales, which also included Kenyapotamus, strongly supported a relationship between hippos and the anatomically similar family Anthracotheriidae. Two archaic whales (Pakicetus and Artiocetus) formed the sister group of the hippopotamid-anthracotheriid clade, but this relationship was weakly supported.[3]
