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Walking with whales

Whales must have evolved from land-based mammals, but fossil evidence of some of the steps in between has been patchy. Newly discovered skeletons with legs fill in the gaps.

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Figure 1: The evolutionary route to a whale.
Figure 2: Ankle bones (astragali) of hoofed mammals and primitive whales.

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Correspondence to Christian de Muizon.

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de Muizon, C. Walking with whales. Nature 413, 259–260 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35095137

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