Hippopotamidae
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Hippopotamus |
Hippopotami (colloquially also "Hippopotamuses") are the members of the family Hippopotamidae. They are the only extant artiodactyls which walk on four toes on each foot.
Only two species survive today, Hippopotamus amphibius and Choeropsis liberiensis. They are the last survivors of two major evolutionary lineages, the hippos proper and the pygmy hippos, respectively; these lineages could arguably be considered subfamilies but their relationships to each other - apart from being fairly distant relatives - are not well resolved.
The enigmatic Kenyapotamus is insufficiently known to be assigned a place in the hippo phylogeny with any degree of certainty. In addition, the genus Hexaprotodon, now restricted to a group of animals living around the northern and northeastern Indian Ocean, formerly included most ancient hippos but this turned out to be paraphyletic.
The systematics and taxonomy used here follows the review of Boisserie (2005).
Genus Hippopotamus - true hippopotami
- Hippopotamus amphibius - Hippopotamus
- Hippopotamus antiquus - European Hippopotamus (prehistoric)
- Hippopotamus creutzburgi - Cretan Dwarf Hippopotamus (prehistoric)
- Hippopotamus madagascariensis - Madagascar Hippopotamus (prehistoric)
- Hippopotamus lemerlei - Lemerle's Hippopotamus (prehistoric)
- Hippopotamus laloumena - Lesser Madagascar Hippopotamus (prehistoric)
- Hippopotamus melitensis - Lesser Siculo-Maltese Hippopotamus (prehistoric)
- Hippopotamus pentlandi - Siculo-Maltese Hippopotamus (prehistoric)
- Hippopotamus gorgops -Gorgon-eyed River Horse(fossil)
Tentatively placed into Hippopotamus:
- Hippopotamus karumensis (fossil)
- Hippopotamus aethiopicus (fossil)
- Hippopotamus protamphibius (fossil)
- Hippopotamus coryndoni (fossil)
- Hippopotamus afarensis (fossil) - formerly genus Trilobophorus
Genus Phanourios
- Phanourios minutus - Cyprus Dwarf Hippopotamus (prehistoric)
Genus Hexaprotodon - hexaprotodons or Asian hippopotami
- Hexaprotodon palaeindicus - Indian Hippopotamus (fossil)
- Hexaprotodon namadicus - Lesser Indian Hippopotamus (fossil) - possibly same as H. palaeindicus
- Hexaprotodon bruneti - Afar Hexaprotodon (fossil)
- Hexaprotodon sivalensis - Sivalik Hippopotamus (fossil)
- Hexaprotodon sp. - Myanmar Hippopotamus (fossil)
- and some Indonesian species from the Pleistocene
Genus Archaeopotamus - formerly included in Hexaprotodon
Genus Choeropsis - pygmy hippopotami
- Choeropsis liberiensis - Pygmy Hippopotamus
- Choeropsis madagascariensis - Madagascar Pygmy Hippopotamus (prehistoric)
Genus Saotherium - formerly included in Hexaprotodon
- Saotherium mingoz (fossil)
[edit] References
- Boisserie, Jean-Renaud (2005): The phylogeny and taxonomy of Hippopotamidae (Mammalia: Artiodactyla): a review based on morphology and cladistic analysis. Zool. J. Linn. Soc. 143(1): 1-26. DOI:10.1111/j.1096-3642.2004.00138.x (HTML abstract)
- TSN 624917. Integrated Taxonomic Information System. Accessed on 11 August 2004.
- Petronio, C. (1995): Note on the taxonomy of Pleistocene hippopotamuses. Ibex 3: 53-55. PDF fulltext
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