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Whales, dolphins and porpoises belong to the order Cetartiodactyla, which consists of even-toed ungulates. Their closest non-cetacean living relatives are the hippopotamuses, from which they and other cetaceans diverged about 54 million years ago.
This hypothesis was proposed due to similarities between the unusual triangular teeth of the mesonychians and those of early whales. However, molecular phylogeny data indicates that whales are very closely related to the artiodactyls, with hippopotamuses as their closest living relative.
The pygmy right whale shares several characteristics with the right whales, with the exception of having a dorsal fin. Also, pygmy right whales' heads are no more than one quarter the size of their bodies, whereas the right whales' heads are about one-third the size of their bodies. [11] The pygmy right whale is the only extant member of its ...
Whales' direct lineage began in the early Eocene, around 55.8 million years ago, with early artiodactyls. [73] Most molecular biological evidence suggests that hippos are the closest living relatives.
Whippomorpha or Cetancodonta is a group of artiodactyls that contains all living cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) and the hippopotamids. [1] All whippomorphs are descendants of the last common ancestor of Hippopotamus amphibius and Tursiops truncatus.
Although it has morphological similarities with the false killer whale, the pygmy killer whale and the pilot whales, a study of cytochrome b gene sequences indicates that its closest extant relatives are the snubfin dolphins of the genus Orcaella. [18]
Fewer than 400 individual North Atlantic right whales remain in the wild, and their numbers continue to decline. Oceana, a conservation group based in D.C., has reported numerous collisions ...
Several lines of evidence, first from blood proteins, then from molecular systematics, [12] DNA [13] [14] and the fossil record, show their closest living relatives are cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises).