Biologists clash over how to draw the whale family tree.

Gatesy, J., et al. 1999. Stability of cladistic relationships between cetacea and higher-level artiodactyl taxa. Systematic Biology 48(March):6.

Nikaido, M. . . . and N. Okada. 1999. Phylogenetic relationships among cetartiodactyls based on insertions of short and long interpersed elements: Hippopotamuses are the closest extant relatives of whales. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 96(Aug. 31):10261.

Thewissen, J.G.M., and S.I. Madar. 1999. Ankle morphology of the earliest cataceans and its implications for the phylogenetic relations among ungulates. Systematic Biology 48(March):21.

Hillis, D.M. 1999. SINEs of the perfect character. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 96(August):9979.

Some information about whale evolution is available at the home page of J.G.M. Thewissen from the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine at http://www.neoucom.edu/depts/anat/whaleorigins.htm.

John Gatesy
University of Wyoming
1206 A Downey Street
Laramie, WY 82072

Daniel Graur
Tel Aviv University
Department of Zoology
Tel Aviv 69978
Israel

David M. Hillis
University of Texas at Austin
School of Biological Sciences
Section of Integrative Biology
Austin, TX 78712

Patrick Luckett
University of Puerto Rico
Medical Sciences Campus
Department of Anatomy
P.O. Box 365067
San Juan, PR 00936-5067

Norihiro Okada
Tokyo Institute of Technology
Faculty of Bioscience and Biotechnology
4259 Nagatsuta-cho
Yokohama, Midori-ku
Kanagawa 226-8501
Japan

Maureen O’Leary
State University of New York at Stony Brook
Department of Anatomical Sciences
Health Sciences Center, T-8
Stony Brook, NY 11794-8081

J.G.M. Thewissen
Ohio Universities College of Medicine
Department of Anatomy
Rootstown, OH 44240

From Science News, Vol. 156, No. 19, November 6, 1999, p. 296. Copyright © 1999, Science Service.