Deer, elk, giraffes, and other ungulates may have all gotten their headgear from a common ancestor that lived 15 million years to 20 million years ago.
Sign up for our email newsletter for the latest science newsAntlers are like giant, imposing cradles, sometimes stretching out from an animal’s head in a bowl-like shape with horns reaching for the sky.Communications Biology,
The researchers closely looked at RNA since it would tell them which genes might be involved in the process of building horns or antlers. While it would be ideal to look at the RNA of fossil ruminants, RNA doesn’t preserve well. “We found that there are genes that are expressed in an analogous pattern,” Calamari says. “Some of these genes could be related to horn and antler formation.”The similar markers in RNA support the theory that there is a common ancestor for the various types of ruminants with headgear, rather than a parallel evolution in which groups developed these features independently.
While this research supports the theory that all horns evolved from a common ancestor, it’s unclear what that ancestor might have looked like. All headgear began to appear in ruminants about 15 million years to 20 million years ago in the Middle Miocene. But the fossil record is still incomplete — no such common ancestor has been defined yet.Calamari speculates that this common ancestor may have looked like a, also known as a chevrotain, which comes from the Tragulidae family.
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