Evolution of the giraffe’s long neck happened in several stages, study reveals

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HARROW: The scientific community has remained baffled for years because of the origin of giraffe’s long, slender neck. They researched around the theory said the evolution enabled the mammals to find food in higher places. They thought that the long necks help giraffes in fighting predators better. But now a new study of fossil cervical vertebrae of giraffes has showed that the evolution of the giraffe’s long neck occurred in several stages.
According to the study, the neck vertebrae at first extended towards the mammal’s head, and millions of years later the vertebrae extended towards the tail. This is the first time ever that scientists have provided facts related to the transformation of the giraffe’s extinct ancestors.
Giraffe anatomy expert Nikos Solounias, who led the research, said it was interesting to observe that the lengthening was not consistent.
Solounias gave explanation of how the evolution of giraffe’s long neck has happened. The third vertebra from the top of a mammal’s spine is known as C3 vertebra. Giraffe’s C3 vertebra’s front part started to elongate in one cluster of the mammal’s species. The back part of the C3 vertebra began extending millions of years later.
The modern giraffe is the only giraffe species having C3 vertebra elongated in both front and back. This evolutionary alteration has explained the occurrence of its slender and bizarrely long neck.
“First, only the front portion of the C3 vertebra lengthened in one group of species. The second stage was the elongation of the back portion of the C3 neck vertebra. The modern giraffe is the only species that underwent both stages, which is why it has a remarkably long neck.”
“We also found that the most primitive giraffe already started off with a slightly elongated neck,” Melinda Danowitz, a medical student in NYIT’s Academic Medicine Scholars program, added in the release. “The lengthening started before the giraffe family was even created 16 million years ago.”