''Kenyapotamus'' is a possible ancestor of living

hippopotamuses The hippopotamus (''Hippopotamus amphibius;'' ; : hippopotamuses), often shortened to hippo (: hippos), further qualified as the common hippopotamus, Nile hippopotamus and river hippopotamus, is a large semiaquatic Mammal, mammal native to su ...

that lived roughly 16 million to 8 million years ago during the

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and mea ...

epoch. Its name reflects that its fossils were first found in modern-day

Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...

. Although little is known about ''Kenyapotamus'', its dental pattern bore similarities to that of the genus '' Xenohyus'', a European suid from the Early Miocene. This led some scientists to conclude that hippopotami were most closely related to modern peccaries and suids.Petronio, C. (1995): Note on the taxonomy of Pleistocene hippopotamuses. ''Ibex'' 3: 53-55
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Recent molecular research has suggested that

are more closely related to

cetacea Cetacea (; , ) is an infraorder of aquatic mammals belonging to the order Artiodactyla that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises. Key characteristics are their fully aquatic lifestyle, streamlined body shape, often large size and exclusively c ...

ns than to other

artiodactyl Artiodactyls are placental mammals belonging to the order Artiodactyla ( , ). Typically, they are ungulates which bear weight equally on two (an even number) of their five toes (the third and fourth, often in the form of a hoof). The other t ...

s. A morphological analysis of fossil artiodactyls and whales, which also included ''Kenyapotamus'', strongly supported a relationship between hippos and the anatomically similar family Anthracotheriidae. Two archaic whales (''

Pakicetus ''Pakicetus'' (meaning 'whale from Pakistan') is an extinct genus of amphibious cetacean of the family Pakicetidae, which was endemic to the Indian Subcontinent during the Ypresian (early Eocene) period, about 50 million years ago. It was a w ...

'' and '' Artiocetus'') formed the sister group of the hippopotamid-anthracotheriid clade, but this relationship was weakly supported.

References

Extinct hippopotamuses Miocene Artiodactyla Miocene mammals of Africa Fossil taxa described in 1983 Prehistoric Artiodactyla genera {{paleo-eventoedungulate-stub