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Mud Sucking Mini Whale
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26-12-2009 1:03am#1Another link in the whales' evolutionary story has been discovered in Australia. The 3 meter long Mammalodon colliver, which lived some 25 million years ago, seems to have been a bottom feeder, sucking up food from he mud. This may well have been a sort of 'missing-link' between toothed whales and baleen (filter feeding) whales.
Interestingly, it's fossils were first discovered in 1932, but only recently after a restudy has their importance been noticed.
Mammalodon was not the only whale in the neighbourhood. It shared it's habitat with the predatory Janjucetus hunderi, who may well have predated upon it.The newfound fossil whale, which measures just nine feet (three meters) long, shares the same distinct jaw and skull structures as today's baleens.
But the tiny whale also had teeth, said study author Erich Fitzgerald, a paleontologist at Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Australia.
The odd combination suggests that the dwarf whale might have been adept at feeding on larger, chewier prey from the seafloor, using its tongue and facial muscles to "vacuum" along the sandy bottom, the study authors say
Full article here.
Picture by Carl Buell2
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