Island Africa

A five-ton African elephant would seem to have little in common with an aardvark or a manatee, and still less with the nine-inch African golden mole. Yet despite the enormous differences in appearance, new research shows that all four are surprisingly close relatives. In fact, says Mark Springer, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California at Riverside, they are more closely related to one another than a golden mole is to a common mole. Springer’s research is prompting biologists to reconsider the ancestry of these and many other mammals.