It has long been wondered by scientists just how the giraffe evolved to have its long neck. Now we know.
The giraffe, world’s tallest mammal, was thought to have developed its neck to enable it to find food in higher places, and that it made it easier for the animal to fight predators.
A new study, however, proves that the evolution of the giraffe’s neck came in several stages. First, the neck vertebrae reached into the mammal’s neck, and millions of years later, the vertebrae extended to the tail.
This is the first time the scientific world is given fact on the transformation of the giraffe’s ancestors.
The research, led by paleontologist at the College of Osteopathic Medicine at MIT and giraffe anatomy expert Nikos Solounias, reveals that the evolution of the giraffe has not been consistent.
The third vertebra of the giraffe began elongating in one cluster of the animal’s species. After millions of years, the back part of its C3 vertebra started extending, fast forwarding to today, where the giraffe’s C3 vertebra has elongated both to the front and the back. The modern giraffe is the only species to have developed this way, and it explains the slenderness and unusual length of its neck.
It’s all in the C3 vertebrae
The study consisted of the observation of 71 fossilized giraffe vertebrae, 2 of which are living species and 9 that are extinct. The fossils date back to the late 1800s-1900s, and were borrowed from museums in Greece, Germany, Kenya, Sweden, Austria and England. The team discovered started before the giraffe family came to be; the oldest giraffe fossil had already developed an elongated neck. With closer inspection of the fossil’s anatomy, it was revealed that the frontal part of the C3 vertebrae first began to extend 7 million years ago with the giraffe’s extinct forefathers called Samotherium, and the elongation of the back part of the vertebrae happened one million years ago.
While one gets longer, another gets shorter
The most fascinating part of this revelation is that while the giraffe’s neck elongated over time, another member of its family had its neck shorten. The okapi, a Central African cousin of the giraffe, has what researchers found as a ‘secondarily shortened neck’, which leads Solounias and his team to believe that the okapi are on an entirely different evolutionary path than the modern giraffe.
A full report of the findings can be found in the latest issue Royal Society Open Science Journal.
