Carlos Mauricio Peredo with <i>Maiabalaena nesbittae</i> (IMAGE)
Caption
Carlos Mauricio Peredo, National Museum of Natural History predoctoral fellow and lead author of the study, with the 33 million-year-old early baleen whale Maiabalaena nesbittae. The fossil is the first of its species to be described by scientists and will now serve as the exemplar of this species for the scientific community. Because of its age, Peredo said, paleontologists suspected Maiabalaena might hold important clues about baleen's evolution. The fossil comes from a period of massive geological change during the second major phase of whale evolution, around the time the Eocene epoch was transitioning to the Oligocene. With continents shifting and separating, ocean currents were swirling around Antarctica for the first time, cooling the waters significantly. The fossil record indicates that whales' feeding styles diverged rapidly during this timeframe, with one group leading to today's filter-feeding whales and the other leading to echolocating ones.
Credit
Smithsonian
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