Fossils show hoofed animals may have originated in or near India

While felines trace their origins to the Egyptian provinces, a new study has found that hoofed mammals may have originated in or near present-day India. The study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology has stuck together with a nearly complete picture of the skeletal anatomy of hoofed mammals that lived on the Indian subcontinent almost 55 million years ago.

Team assessed over 350 fossils

For the purpose of the study, a team of scientists assessed over 350 fossils of hoofed animals – a group of animals which include camels, horses, tapirs, hippos and rhinos amongst others. The team, which also included Kishor Kumar from Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology in Uttarakhand, unearthed a sheep-sized animal with moderate running ability belonging to the now-extinct genus of mammals called Cambaytherium. 

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Following an analysis of the same, they concluded that the fossil possessed features that were intermediate between specialized hoofed mammals and their more generalized forerunners. Comparing its bones with many other living and extinct mammals, they discovered that the group of animals, to which the fossil belonged, represents an evolutionary stage more primitive than any known hoofed mammal.

After their latest findings, scientists have doubled down on their claim that the group in or near India, which was a continent at that time continuously moving northward till it collided with the Asian continent. They concluded that the group likely evolved in isolation in or near India 66-56 million years ago, before dispersing to other continents when the land connection with Asia formed.  

“In 1990, Krause & Maas proposed that these (mammal) orders might have evolved in India, during its northward drift from Madagascar, dispersing across the northern continents when India collided with Asia,” Ken Rose, lead author of the study from Johns Hopkins University in the US wrote.

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Representative image/Pixabey