Anthracotheres and the hippo line
Semi-aquatic artiodactyls spread across the Old World, and one branch of them leads to hippopotamuses.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 11 million years
- Known to
- ± 1 million years
- Era
- Oligocene, Cenozoic
Anthracotheres are pig-like to hippo-like artiodactyls, common in coal-forming swamps — their name means coal beasts — across Eurasia, Africa and North America. Most analyses derive hippopotamuses from within this group, which reconciles a long-standing puzzle: molecular evidence places hippos as the closest living relatives of whales, but the fossil gap between them was enormous. Anthracotheres fill it, and place the hippo-whale split back in the Eocene.