Open the Youtube video It's a journey that began with a remarkable fact: the ancestors of whales crawled out onto land around 400 million years ago and entered upon a dazzling odyssey of evolution.

"We think the rest of the body is inside," said Zalmout. The common ancestor of whales and of all other land animals was a flatheaded, salamander-shaped tetrapod that hauled itself out of the sea ...

Early ancestors of the ocean's biggest animals once walked on land. Follow their extraordinary journey from shore to sea. Although whales are expert swimmers and perfectly adapted to life underwater, ...

Once four-legged land animals, whales evolved from ancestors Pakicetus, which lived along ancient Pakistani shores ...

None of these animals is necessarily a direct ancestor of the whales we know today; they may be side branches of the family tree. But the important thing is that each fossil whale shares new ...

One of the first cetaceans, Pakicetus, was a goat-sized creature that lived along the banks of lakes and rivers in present-day Pakistan. Although it looked nothing like a whale, Pakicetus displayed ...

Skeletons of Basilosaurus, a whale ancestor, reveal the leviathan still retained tiny hind legs. John Klausmeyer / University of Michigan Museum of Natual History Whales evolved from mammals that ...

Along the way, we meet an extraordinary cast of ancient characters, from four-tusked elephants to crocs that would dwarf any reptile alive today to a whale ancestor that walked on four legs.

Whales’ ancestors were land-dwellers about 50 million years ago before moving into water. Elemans said the animals adapted their voice boxes over tens of millions of years to make sounds underwater.