{"id":5576,"date":"2017-05-25T16:29:51","date_gmt":"2017-05-25T20:29:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=5576"},"modified":"2017-05-25T16:29:51","modified_gmt":"2017-05-25T20:29:51","slug":"new-toothed-fossil-the-missing-link-between-ancient-and-modern-baleen-whales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/new-toothed-fossil-the-missing-link-between-ancient-and-modern-baleen-whales\/","title":{"rendered":"New toothed fossil the missing link between ancient and modern baleen whales"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_5605\" style=\"width: 268px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5605\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5605\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/139856_web-258x300.jpg\" alt=\"Two Mystacodon selenensis individuals diving down to catch eagle rays. (Image by Alberto Gennari)\" width=\"258\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/139856_web-258x300.jpg 258w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/139856_web-883x1024.jpg 883w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/139856_web.jpg 1440w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 258px) 100vw, 258px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-5605\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Two Mystacodon selenensis individuals diving down to catch eagle rays. <em>(Image by Alberto Gennari)<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p><span class=\"il\">Scientists<\/span> finally found the missing evolutionary link between the modern whales&#8217; toothed ancestors, the basilosaurids, and the filter-feeding mysticetes, which include the blue whale, the humpback whale, and the right whale.\u00a0A recent paper describes a 36.4-million-year-old whale fossil with teeth and small vestigial hind limbs, which also help connect it to the whales&#8217; ancient land-dwelling ancestors. \u00a0Despite having teeth, the specimen\u2014dubbed <em>Mystacodon<\/em>\u2014had a mouth better suited for sucking in small animals and bottom-feeding rather than biting. Both of these behaviors can be observed in modern baleen whales, in whom the teeth have long been replaced with keratin fibers which allow them to trap the small prey. <em>Mystacodon <\/em>discovery helps fill the important evolutionary step that turned whales from active predators into filter feeders.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Authors:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Olivier Lambert, Manuel Mart\u00ednez-C\u00e1ceres, Giovanni Bianucci, Claudio Di Celma, Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi, Etienne Steurbaut, Mario Urbina, Christian de Muizon<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Corresponding author:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Olivier Lambert, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural <span class=\"il\">Sciences<\/span>, Email: <a href=\"mailto:olivier.lambert@naturalsciences.be\" target=\"_blank\">olivier.lambert@<wbr \/>naturalsciences.be<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cell.com\/current-biology\/fulltext\/S0960-9822(17)30435-9?_returnURL=http%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982217304359%3Fshowall%3Dtrue\" target=\"_blank\">Original paper<\/a> published in <em>Current Biology<\/em> on May 11, 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists finally found the missing evolutionary link between the modern whales&#8217; toothed ancestors, the basilosaurids, and the filter-feeding mysticetes, which include the blue whale, the humpback whale, and the right whale.\u00a0A recent paper describes a 36.4-million-year-old whale fossil with teeth and small vestigial hind limbs, which also help connect it to the whales&#8217; ancient land-dwelling [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[2881,917,265,2983],"class_list":["post-5576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-baleen-whales","tag-evolution","tag-fossil","tag-whale"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-1rW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5576"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5608,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5576\/revisions\/5608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}