The so-called ‘dawn horse’, or Eohippus, was most likely not related to horses at all, but was very like a modern-day hyrax - that is, a rock badger or coney.
Tour archaeological sites in Jerusalem and Masada, hike through desert canyons to see hyrax and ibex.
Nick responded to my post about Badger's God with a link to a nice picture of the hyrax or rock badger that appears in the Bible.
The hyrax - elephant - sirenian core is well-accepted on morphological grounds.
Some of these dassies, these hyraxes, went into the rocks, but this one actually climbs into the treetops.
So do wombats, hyraxes, aye-ayes, and lagomorphs, to give a few examples chosen from modern mammals.
From the molecular viewpoint, however, the phylogenetic relationship among elephants, sirenians, and hyraxes remains confused.
