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Ancient whale 'truly weird'

Blue whale's aged cousin: small, enormous eyes, ate sharks.

A 25-million-year-old whale fossil from southeastern Australia has revealed a bizarre early type of 'baleen' whale. The creature was an ancient cousin of our modern blue whales and humpbacks, but it was hardly a gentle giant of the sea. Instead it was small and predatory, with enormous eyes and teeth.

Read the story here.

Posted by Nicola Jones on August 16, 2006 12:01 AM |

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Erich Fitzgerald has also written "A bizarre new toothed mysticete (Cetacea) from Australia and the early evolution of baleen whales" which appears in "Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences".

Abstract:
http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/link.asp?id=h6h887j21g07641r

Erich Fitrzgerald's homepage:
http://www.geosci.monash.edu.au/postgrad/directory/fitzgerald/index.html

The Sydney Morning Herald's article on this topic, "Discovered: Aussie T-rex of the deep", is at:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/science/discovered-aussie-trex-of-the-deep/2006/08/16/1155407866399.html

and contains a link to a video which is directly accessible here:
http://media.fairfax.com.au/?rid=21161

John Latter / Jorolat
Evolution Research
http://evomech.blogspot.com/

Posted by: John Latter | August 16, 2006 06:56 PM

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