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Retention of an astragalus indistinguishable from that of artiodactyls shows that pakicetids are closely related to artiodactyls phylogenetically, but does not make Ichthyolestes and Pakicetus terrestrial or cursorial.
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Middle Eocene protocetid astragali are divergent from both. Multivariate morphometric comparison (Auto3Dgm) shows that pakicetid astragali overlap almost completely in shape with those of early artiodactyls. Tooth size and astragalus size are highly correlated, corroborating reference of astragali to the first three archaeocete taxa based on teeth. Ichthyolestes and Pakicetus are pakicetid archaeocetes, Gandakasia is presently indeterminate to family, and Ambulocetus is an ambulocetid. Ganda Kas artiodactyls are smaller and rare in comparison. They separate clearly into four species distinguished by size: from smallest to largest Ichthyolestes pinfoldi Dehm and Oettingen-Spielberg, Pakicetus attocki (West), Gandakasia potens Dehm and Oettingen-Spielberg, and Ambulocetus natans Thewissen et al. These bring the total number of archaeocete astragali known from Ganda Kas to 28.
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In addition, Dehm’s group collected 16 complete or partial astragali of archaeocetes that were misidentified as artiodactyls. Both are now recognized as early and primitive archaeocete cetaceans. The genera and species Ichthyolestes pinfoldi and Gandakasia potens were named from this collection. Richard Dehm and colleagues of the Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie in Munich made an important collection of early-to-middle Eocene mammals at Ganda Kas in Pakistan during the winter of 1955/56.