Kenyapotamus

Kenyapotamus Temporal range: Middle Miocene to Late Miocene PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Artiodactyla
Family:	Hippopotamidae
Subfamily:	† Kenyapotaminae
Genus:	† Kenyapotamus Pickford, 1983 [1]
Species
K. coryndoni and K. ternani

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.

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]

Palaeoecology

Kenyapotamus coryndoni had a C₃ plant based diet approximately 9.9 Ma, but by 9.6 Ma, its diet had shifted to be a mixture of C₃ and C₄ plants, with only one specimen from this interval showing a predominantly C₃ diet. ^[4]

References

1. Pickford, Martin (1983). "On the origins of Hippopotamidae together with descriptions of two new species, a new genus and a new subfamily from the Miocene of Kenya". Geobios . 16 (2). Lyon: 193–217. Bibcode:1983Geobi..16..193P. doi:10.1016/S0016-6995(83)80019-9.
2. Petronio, C. (1995): Note on the taxonomy of Pleistocene hippopotamuses. Ibex3: 53-55. PDF fulltext Archived 12 September 2008 at the Wayback Machine
3. Boisserie, Jean-Renaud; Fabrice Lihoreau; Michel Brunet (February 2005). "The position of Hippopotamidae within Cetartiodactyla". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America . 102 (5): 1537–1541. Bibcode:2005PNAS..102.1537B. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0409518102 . PMC   547867 . PMID   15677331.
4. Uno, Kevin T.; Cerling, Thure E.; Harris, John M.; Kunimatsu, Yutaka; Leakey, Meave G.; Nakatsukasa, Masato; Nakaya, Hideo (19 April 2011). "Late Miocene to Pliocene carbon isotope record of differential diet change among East African herbivores". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America . 108 (16): 6509–6514. doi:10.1073/pnas.1018435108. ISSN   0027-8424. PMC   3080981 . PMID   21464327 – via Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.