Artiodactyl interspersed DNA repeats in cetacean genomes

Interspersed repeats that emerged at different evolutionary times are informative in mammalian phylogeny. Here we show that the ancient short interspersed elements (SINEs) ARE1 and ARE2 are abundantly present in the genomes of artiodactyls and cetaceans but not in other mammalian genomes. This supports the classification of the cetaceans with the artiodactyls by a shared character that is unlikely to be the result of convergence.