Indohyus
Sign in to saveIndohyus (meaning "Indian pig", from Greek ινδός, indos, meaning 'Indian' and ὗς, hus, meaning 'pig' or 'swine') is an extinct genus of raoellid artiodactyl known from Eocene fossils in Asia. The fossils were discovered among rocks that had been collected in 1970 in Kashmir by the Indian geologist A. Ranga Rao, who found a few teeth and parts of a jawbone. He named the type and only species, Indohyus indirae, one year later.
Article
12 sectionsContents
- Discovery
- Classification
- Description
- Skull
- Ribs and vertabrae
- Limbs and girdles
- Paleobiology
- Diet
- Locomotion
- Paleoecology
- See also
- References
Indohyus (meaning "Indian pig", from Greek ινδός, indos, meaning 'Indian' and ὗς, hus, meaning 'pig' or 'swine') is an extinct genus of raoellid artiodactyl known from Eocene fossils in Asia. The fossils were discovered among rocks that had been collected in 1970 in Kashmir by the Indian geologist A. Ranga Rao, who found a few teeth and parts of a jawbone. He named the type and only species, Indohyus indirae, one year later.
In 2007, Hans Thewissen recognised an auditory bulla, a highly distinctive ear structure found only in cetaceans, in a broken skull collected from these rocks and given to him by Ranga Rao's widow. Later analysis of oxygen-18 values and the presence of osteosclerotic bones indicate that the chevrotain-like Indohyus was habitually aquatic.