Could Whales Elsewhere be Afrotheres?

The largest animals alive today--and to loom into the human imagination--are the whales, a group of mammals that had been going from skinny-dip to full-blown dive in just 53.5 million years. Due to their alien, almost non-mammalian shapes, you'd be surprised at which order they belong to.

Whales belong to the order Artiodactyla, the Even-Toed Ungulates. The order is also exclusive to hippos, deer, camels, giraffes, pronghorns, antelopes, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and peccaries. (The differences between each other are so great that you would never notice that fact.)

But in an alternate Earth, the whales belong to another group:

Afrotheria

Recent molecular evidence has found that this superorder is exclusive to elephants, sengis, aardvarks, tenrecs, hyraxes and sea cows. But the connection, as far as I know, is strictly genetic, not visible to the naked eye or the process of fossilization.

In order for the whales of this alternate Earth to evolve from ancient afrotheres, should anything in their skeleton change shape and/or size to confirm that connection, or would the differences be strictly genetic?

posted almost 8 years ago

JohnWDailey‭

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