Page 180 - The Errors the American National Academy of Sciences

The Errors of the American National Academy of Sciences

pretation by palaeontologists of many fossil records of Artiodactyla to
match our conclusions. Extensive morphological reversals and con-
vergences, as well as large gaps in the fossil record, will then have to
be acknowledged. 60
Michel C. Milinkovitch, of the Molecular Biology Department of
the University of Brussels, and J.G.M. Thewissen of Northeastern

Ohio Medical School, wrote in the same issue of Nature that the
Japanese scientists' findings on the origin of the whale conflicted with
both morphological and paleontological data, contrary to the claims
of the NAS:
The molecular analyses of Shimamura et al.3, reported on page 666
of this issue, further disrupt phylogenetic dogma. Indeed, not only
do the authors confirm the close relationship between artiodactyls
and cetaceans, but they propose that cetaceans are deeply
nested within the phylogenetic tree of the artiodactyls.
These results strikingly contradict the common inter-
pretation of the available morphological data

An artiodactyl

178