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RETURN TO THE SEA  ~50 million years

The cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) are descendants of land-living mammals. Their terrestrial origins are specifically indicated by:

-Their need to breathe air from the surface ;

-The bones of their fins, which resemble the jointed hands of land mammals;

-The vertical movement of their spines, characteristic more of a running mammal than of the horizontal movement of fish.

The question of how land animals evolved into ocean-going leviathans had been a mystery for a long time, owing to gaps in the fossil record. However, recent discoveries in Pakistan have clarified many of these questions, and revealed several stages in the transition of the cetaceans from land to sea.(click to see all the article on Wikipedia)

重返海洋 ~5千萬年前

鯨目動物(鯨魚,海豚,鼠海豚)是陸地哺乳動物的後裔。其陸地起源的說法為下列幾項:

~牠們必須在水面呼吸;

~牠們鰭內的骨頭,就像陸地哺乳動物的手部關節一樣;

~牠們的背鰭是垂直運動的,較於魚類背鰭的水平運動,其特徵更像奔跑的哺乳動物。

而陸地動物如何演化進入海洋成為利維坦(海洋生物),由於化石紀錄的空白,使得這謎團由來已久。然而,最近在巴基斯坦的一些發現,澄清了這個問題,並揭露了鯨目動物從陸地過渡到海上的一些階段。

(維基連結:利維坦)(鯨目動物的演化無中文版內容)

(譯者註:利維坦根據翻譯的不同,也有利芙森,利拜亞森……等,如果有玩FF,那就是裡面的水中召喚獸,不清楚的就想像成大海怪一類的,本文應該指龐大的鯨目動物。)

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