Kenyapotamus is an extinct genus of hippopotamid and possible ancestor of living hippopotamuses that lived roughly 16 million to 8 million years ago during the Miocene epoch. Its name reflects that its fossils were first found in modern-day Kenya.
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. PDF fulltext
Recent molecular research has suggested that hippopotamuses are more closely related to cetaceans than to other artiodactyls. 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 and Artiocetus) formed the sister group of the hippopotamid-anthracotheriid clade, but this relationship was weakly supported.
Palaeoecology Kenyapotamus coryndoni had a C3 plant based diet approximately 9.9 Ma, but by 9.6 Ma, its diet had shifted to be a mixture of C3 and C4 plants, with only one specimen from this interval showing a predominantly C3 diet.
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