As per a news release, a new study has said that the long neck of giraffe has evolved through several stages.
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A newly conducted study of the giraffe’s fossil cervical vertebrae substantiated that the evolution of the giraffe’s long neck transpired in a number of stages.
The extending occurred towards the creatures’ head, around 7 million years back. That is the primary time ever that scientists have offered details associated to the transformation of the giraffe’s extinct ancestors.
Researchers at the New York Institute of Technology think the new study complements the previous data on the evolution of giraffes. The third vertebra from the top of a mammal’s spine is called C3 vertebra. Giraffe’s C3 vertebra’s front part started to elongate in one cluster of the mammal’s species.
After Canthumeryx, the ancestor that lived 16 million years ago, the family tree split into two branches. The modern giraffe is the only species to have developed this way, and it explains the slenderness and unusual length of its neck. Somebody from the Lamarckian faculty of evolution, the argument goes, would possibly assume that the little giraffoid would stretch its neck to seize the bottom of these excessive leaves and, by way of exertion, develop an extended neck that it might then move on to its offspring. It occurred disproportionately. The front portion of the C3 vertebra started its lengthening process around 7 million years ago. The elongation of the back part of the C3 vertebrae happened one millions years ago. The modern long-necked giraffe was the only genus whose vertebrae stretched in both directions to produce their famous six-foot-neck. It was made by Solounias and Melinda Danowitz, a medical student from the Academic Medicine Scholars. The team discovered started before the giraffe family came to be; the oldest giraffe fossil had already developed an elongated neck. But, regardless of the thought experiment’s recognition, we’ve identified little of how the giraffe really received its neck.
The sauropod dinosaurs and aquatic plesiosaurs also had impressively long necks. Giraffes only have seven cervical vertebrae, like humans.
“Curiously, as a species” neck grows taller, it’s the opposite for the okapi on central Africa – a member of the giraffe family- became shorter. A total of 71 fossils of 9 extinct and 2 living species of giraffes were examined.
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Regarding the goal of the long necks, Melinda Danowitz said that both possible reasons – reaching food and gaining a fighting advantage (for the males) in order to improve mating chances – remain valid possibilities.
