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Showing results for tags 'cetacea'.
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From the album: Fossil Collection: DC Area and Beyond
Cetacea Flag Ponds Nature Park, MD Calvert Formation Miocene -
From the album: Fossil Collection: DC Area and Beyond
Cetacea Peace River (Wauchula), FL Peace River Formation Miocene -
Hey all, I've been off the forum for a couple weeks owing to a very hectic schedule including some research deadlines, lots of outreach events, and final exams (which just finished for me yesterday). One of the things that happened recently is the publication of our new paper (monograph, really) on the toothed baleen whale Coronodon from the Oligocene of South Carolina. We report a bunch of new specimens including juveniles and an old adult of Coronodon havensteini (the species we first named in 2017) and two new species from the Chandler Bridge Formation - Coronodon planifrons and Coronodon newtonorum. Virtually all of these specimens were found by amateur fossil collectors and donated for study! You can read the paper here for FREE: https://peerj.com/articles/14795/ BUT - it is 150 pages long, so I also wrote the 'clif notes' version on my blog. Blog post #1: new specimens of Coronodon havensteini, and a background to our research: https://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2023/04/new-fossils-of-coronodon-1-new.html Blog post #2: new species of Coronodon: https://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2023/04/new-fossils-of-coronodon-2-two-new.html EDIT: I've just written Blog post #3, broader implications of Coronodon: https://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2023/05/new-fossils-of-coronodon-3-implications.html
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Four weird little pieces from Gainesville fossil hunting. Guess for 1 is maybe turtle? 2 is very dark and was hard to capture the detail on top even with a dslr and flash, maybe a fish part? The bottom two both appear to be some type of teeth to me, whether that’s crocodilians or cetacean I’m not sure. I’m not even certain they’re identifiable!
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Hey all, Part 2 of my blog series on whale and dolphin earbones is here - my guide to identifying isolated dolphin/toothed whale (Odontoceti) periotic bones. Check it out here: https://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2023/01/bobbys-guide-to-whale-dolphin-earbones.html Sample image:
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2022 in review: all of this year's advances in marine mammal paleontology
Boesse posted a topic in General Fossil Discussion
Hey all, it's been a decent year for marine mammal paleontology: I wrote my yearly blog post reviewing all of the new studies that came out. Check it out below: https://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2023/01/2022-in-review-advances-in-marine.html Also - some selected images of the more spectacular marine mammal fossils described this year:
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New blog post! A guide to whale and dolphin earbones - part 1
Boesse posted a topic in General Fossil Discussion
Hi all - it's been a while, since I started on twitter and started teaching much of the itch I scratched through blog writing was taken care of by twitter - but now I've thought about returning to more long-format science communication. The blog format is certainly more informative for most fossil collectors anyway. The new post is just the first in a series on whale and dolphin earbones - the first is an introduction to the basic anatomy and function of earbones, along with basic differences between baleen whale (Mysticeti) and dolphin (Odontoceti) earbones, with comments on their preservation, discovery, and their uses in cetacean taxonomy, cladistics, and studies of diversity. The next post will be the one most anticipated by the majority of collectors - a guide to identifying dolphin periotics by family. The third post will be similar, but directed towards mysticete periotics, and the fourth will cover mysticete and odontocete tympanic bullae. Read it here: https://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2022/12/bobbys-guide-to-whale-dolphin-earbones.html Obligatory photo of some periotics we collected out on Charleston harbor on Dec. 1, well worth boots full of freezing cold water: -
Hello everyone, I discovered a mammal tooth from the Lower Miocene not far from Bordeaux (Aquitaine, Southwestern France). I've already had different opinions but nothing sure. I thought of cetacean, but terrestrial mammal was also discovered on the site. So I show you some pictures of this tooth to get your opinions and arguments for an identification (Cetacea or terrestrial mammal). I apologize for the imperfect quality of the pictures, I only have my phone to take pictures. Thanks in advance for your answers. Damien
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From the album: Skeleton models
my cetacean models, most skulls are 3d-prints of scans provided by Museums, postcrania are mostly handmade© Jan Frost
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Hi everyone, Found these two on Milnerton beach, Cape Town. I’m hazarding a guess that it’s cetacea, possibly flipper phalange? I did find a paper on pliocene cetacea found about 10km further up the coast (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331004600_Fossil_cetaceans_from_Duinefontein_Koeberg_an_early_Pliocene_site_on_the_southwestern_Cape_South_Africa). Tried to contact the author but no answer yet. I don’t know much about fossils so anything you can tell me about these would be greatly appreciated!
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Hey all, Thought I would share this blog post that has a comprehensive review of all papers in marine mammal paleontology published in 2020. Enjoy! https://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2020/12/2020-in-review-advances-in-marine.html
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Back from exile: archaeocete whale discovery in South Carolina
Boesse posted a topic in General Fossil Discussion
Hey all! Between an ill-timed conference, election month, the pandemic, online teaching, and a few other issues, I was way too stressed out and busy to be on here regularly since October. Also, in mid November we began digging up a small basilosaurid whale in Harleyville, SC - very likely to be the most completely known specimen of the dwarf basilosaurid Chrysocetus, and perhaps the most important basilosaurid discovery in North America of my lifetime. I did manage to write a blog post about our fieldwork, so as an apology for being AWOL and only getting back to identifying cetacean stuff a few months later, I offer this writeup as penance! It feels good to be back in the saddle again. Cheers, Bobby
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Hey all, I wrote up some more on our recent paper on the giant dolphin Ankylorhiza (formerly Genus Y) from the Oligocene of South Carolina - this is a bit more interesting as it covers the anatomy, adaptations, feeding ecology, and evolutionary implications of the discovery. Hope you can give it a read! https://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2020/08/ankylorhiza-tiedemani-giant-dolphin_9.html
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Want to read more about the giant dolphin Ankylorhiza (="Genus Y")?
Boesse posted a topic in General Fossil Discussion
Hey all, Since COVID began and I've had more free time I've been getting back to blogging, and now I'm regretting taking such a hiatus since I started here in Charleston. I've written the first of a 2 or 3 part series of semi-technical blog articles that most here should understand and appreciate on our new study on the giant dolphin Ankylorhiza tiedemani (formerly known as Genus Y). The first post is about the background to our paper, and the second one will be a bit more on the anatomy, feeding behavior, locomotion, and evolutionary implications of Ankylorhiza. Take a read here: https://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2020/08/ankylorhiza-tiedemani-giant-dolphin.html
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Whale, dolphin, or porpoise? A meaningful question about meaningless terms
Boesse posted a topic in General Fossil Discussion
Hey all - in discussing my recent research on the new extinct dolphin Ankylorhiza with science journalists, I was reminded of previous frustrations from earlier discussions with students, museum visitors, fossil collectors, journalists, and even other scientists about the meaning of the words whale, dolphin, and porpoise. Some disagreements were on this forum, others were on facebook fossil groups - the whole notion of "that's not a dolphin tooth that's a whale tooth" or vice versa is plagued by the fact that these terms have multiple established meanings and are imprecise, leading to lots of confusion, to the point where I pretty much have to start every discussion off with "there are two groups of cetaceans living today..." - many, for example, are confused about toothed baleen whales existing if only odontocetes have teeth. One thing I tried was to conduct a twitter poll showing four modern species and asking if people thought they were a whale, dolphin, or porpoise - and the majority was right only half the time: a leaping beaked whale was thought to be a dolphin, and a small dolphin was thought to be a porpoise. I've had so many discussions on here and have had to repeat some of these arguments ad nauseam, so I thought I might as well crystallize my thoughts into a blog post. I hope you enjoy it! http://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2020/07/whale-dolphin-or-porpoise-meaningful.html
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Hey y'all - we finally re-named "Squalodon" tiedemani, now known as Ankylorhiza tiedemani - a large macropredatory killer whale like dolphin with some implications for the early feeding ecology of odontocetes (toothed/echolocating whales) and convergent evolution of swimming in baleen whales (mysticetes) and odontocetes after their split some ~35-36 million years ago. I've copied our FB post text below so I don't need to re-type it all. Introducing the species formerly known as Genus Y: Ankylorhiza tiedemani! This large dolphin was originally named from a partial but uninformative skull dredged from the Wando River in South Carolina in the 1880s, erroneously placed in the genus Squalodon, and without any age data. Our new skeleton, CCNHM 103, is nearly complete, and demonstrates 1) that it definitely isn’t Squalodon, needing the new genus name Ankylorhiza, and 2) the species is from the Oligocene epoch. The new skeleton was discovered by Mark Havenstein in the ~24 million year old Chandler Bridge Formation near Summerville SC in the mid 1990s. There are two major aspects to this new study, published today in the prestigious journal Current Biology by one of our paleontologists, Dr. Boessenecker, and colleagues (Dr. Morgan Churchill, Dr. Emily Buchholtz, Dr. Brian Beatty, and Dr. Jonathan Geisler). The first and more simple finding is that Ankylorhiza is large and has several adaptations for feeding on large prey: large, thick-rooted teeth, a robust snout, sharp (and occasionally serrated) cutting edges on its teeth, enormous jaw muscles, and a killer whale-like range of neck motion. This evidence all points toward Ankylorhiza being an apex predator, reinvading the niche formerly occupied by predatory basilosaurid whales which died out only 5 million years before the oldest fossils of Ankylorhiza. The second and more surprising aspect is what the skeleton tells us about the evolution of swimming adaptations. Modern baleen whale and echolocating whale skeletons are remarkably similar, and assumed to have remained static since the split between the two groups some 35 million years ago. Indeed, most “whaleontologists” working on early baleen whales and early dolphins are ‘headhunters’ and focus exclusively on skulls. The flipper and vertebrae of Ankylorhiza indicate that many features in modern baleen (mysticetes) and echolocating whales (odontocetes) actually evolved twice, in parallel – we call this convergent evolution. We know this since modern mysticetes and odontocetes share many features– including a remarkably shortened humerus (upper arm bone; still a bit long in Ankylorhiza), lost muscle attachments of the humerus (still present in Ankylorhiza), short blocky finger bones (long/skinny in Ankylorhiza), a narrow tail stock (wide in Ankylorhiza), and more than 23 or so tail vertebrae (fewer than that in Ankylorhiza). These features therefore must have evolved convergently – likely driven by the locking of the elbow joint, forcing the flipper to be used only for steering and all propulsive force to come from the tail. You can read the paper here: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)30828-9 (please email us if you would like a pdf of the paper)
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Hi all - I did not have time in January when I normally write these up, but thanks to Covid quarantine I managed to get some time last month and write up a comprehensive review on my blog of every single 2019 paper in marine mammal paleontology. Enjoy! https://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2020/05/2019-in-review-advances-in-marine.html
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What's the best way to upload photos here, given the 390 Mb limit?
paleosaur posted a topic in Questions & Answers
I am having troyble uploading images. Most photos I take exceed this. -
This is our 6th-8th grade fossil program. I was not going to start running these until the fall of this year but thanks to an awesome donation and a few identifications from @Boesse , I am going to do a few with these with displaced students from Paradise really soon. They need creative education and I need a few opportunities to do the lab and make tweaks. I am super excited and extremely nervous about this lab. Marine mammals are so well adapted to an aquatic life that they really present a great opportunity for presenting complex scientific concepts to kids. The difficulty in using fossils is that I lack the expertise to be able to identify a lot of it but at the same time, I have a number of fossils that are perfect for kids to handle. I do have a basic idea of what fossils I have now so I can start working out a presentation. The first part of the presentation is going to be a quick run down on the basics of classification, using mammals, and the basics of marine mammal biology. We are only discussing two orders of marine mammal, cetacea and carnivora because we only have fossils from those orders. I do have a Desmostylus tusk but I am not going to use that yet. I need a considerable amount more knowledge about that species and its relationship to sirens before I present. We do not have any Odobenidae fossils and I am not sure we ever will. I plan on running down the basic characteristics that separate the two orders. Once we have covered the basics of the two orders, we will discuss the whales in bit more more depth. At each point in the presentation we will present them with fossils that represent the two orders. This is only going to be about 20 minutes. The rest of the time, they will be examining fossils ! Then comes the lab. We will have stations set up that feature some fossils from each order and a visual guide in helping them identify the fossils. Essentially we want them to enjoy checking out the miocene fossils and learning through a hands-on approach. We want them exploring and coming to their own conclusions using the tools they have. The final station will be the students getting a chance to test their abilities by determining if a Cetacean ear bone belongs to an odontoceti or mysticeti type whale. This is the basic outline and I have quite a bit of work to do on this but I really like the potential. I would like to get a few more STH mammal teeth so we have more for the kids to examine and a few more cetacean ear bones as they are diagnostic which is a good thing to have in an education program but overall I feel good about the fossils we have. We have some with identifications but also a few things that are not known which is a good mix. Some of the fossils... Pic 1- a number of different vertebra. There is a shark vert, several cetacean verts and at least one that looks like it might be from carnivora. I have a few more that are not in the picture too. Pic 2- 4 STH Allodesmus teeth, 4 small STH Odontoceti indet teeth ( I will probably suggest Kentriodon to the kids), a STH Aulophyseter tooth, a much different STH Odontoceti indet tooth, and just for fun, a pretty wicked looking sperm whale tooth from North Carolina. This gives the students a chance to visualize the difference between carnivora and cetacea. Pic 3- A few ear bones that will be the final part of the lab. The two STH fossils are the key. One is a mysticeti and the other is an odontoceti. The big one from North Carolina is more for visual flair. It is a big ear bone, the kids will dig it I think. not pictured, the box of bones the kids will handle, the majority of which came via donation.
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I hardly dare to ask, ... Here is an online offer from someone without even a single feedback, claiming to offer one of the rarest things there is: a piece of narwhale tusk. Looks like flint or agate to me. maybe good for a laugh?
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Hello together, I am interested in all things cetacean, but also sirenians, desmostylia, pinnipedia or maybe marine reptiles. What I can offer are some carpatian cave bear bones including a complete paw of which I dont know if its composite. mammut jaw fragments, big bovine and cervid skull fragments and similar stuff. i could also offer to custom build skeletal models, although I can´t guarantee for quality or fast delivery (depending on what you may want) I also could offer an yet unpainted (or painted, if you wish) resin model of dunkleosteus terelli, bought from dinosaur corporation. If there is anything else you may want for your sea critters, just ask me, there is a lot of fossils that I may be able to part from. Thinking about shipping costs trading in europe would be easier, but as a friend of mine ships a container once a year, there may be a possibility for overseas trade also. Aloha J -
A Miocene Breeding Ground of an Extinct Baleen Whale Found in Japan
Oxytropidoceras posted a topic in Fossil News
15-million-year-old baby whale fossil reveals ancient breeding grounds. New information about the habits of extinct whales may shed light on the behaviour of their modern relatives, writes Andrew Masterson. https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/15-million-year-old-baby-whale-fossil-reveals-ancient-breeding-grounds Other sources: https://phys.org/news/2017-08-potential-site-miocene-era-baleen.html https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170822092205.htm The paper is: Cheng-Hsiu Tsai. A Miocene breeding ground of an extinct baleen whale ( Cetacea: Mysticeti). PeerJ, 2017; 5: e3711 DOI: 10.7717/peerj.3711 https://peerj.com/articles/3711/ Yours, Paul H. -
Introducing Coronodon havensteini - a new toothed baleen whale from South Carolina
Boesse posted a topic in Fossil News
Hey all, On Thursday some colleagues and I published a new archaeocete-like baleen whale from the Oligocene of South Carolina. This is one of the most primitive baleen whales known, and the skull bears many primitive features in common with basilosaurid archaeocetes. We named it Coronodon havensteini - Coronodon refers to the cusps which make a crown-shape, and the species name after Mark Havenstein who collected the specimen. A life restoration I've made of the animals likely gross-looking mouth can be seen below, along with a photograph of the skull. Here's some press releases: http://www.postandcourier.com/news/beast-from-the-past-wando-river-fossil-turns-out-to/article_cd4317c0-5ce5-11e7-965a-274b18c78111.html http://today.cofc.edu/2017/06/29/baleen-whale-fossil-current-biology/ And here's the published article: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)30704-2 And if you go to the Mace Brown Museum of Natural History facebook page, there's a video of me on the news last night being interviewed! Edit: our collections manager uploaded the news clip to youtube:
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The "Cone Whale" is now on display at CCNHM, Charleston, SC!
Boesse posted a topic in A Trip to the Museum
Hey all, Our collections manager and I have had a pretty busy week, and finished the first phase of the installation of the "Cone Whale" - a baleen whale skeleton collected from the Lee Creek Mine by Lee Cone (President of the Special Friends of the Aurora Museum). The specimen is the most complete whale skeleton ever collected from the mine, and was hauled out a few bones at a time over a two week period in Spring 2007. It includes a partial disarticulated cranium with an earbone (petrosal/periotic), left and right mandibles, all cervical vertebrae, most of the thoracics, and possibly a couple of lumbar vertebrae - and about a dozen ribs. The skeleton also has numerous shark bite marks, which just yesterday we marked with a series of red triangular markers. The new exhibit features artwork by yours truly, shark-bitten ribs in a magnifying box, and in the future will also include a number of specimens that the "Cone Whale" was preserved with. The "Cone Whale" shares a number of features in common with rorquals (family Balaenopteridae - the pleat-throated whales, e.g. humpback, fin, blue, minke) and gray whales (family Eschrichtiidae). The two families are closely related, with gray whales possibly being included within the rorquals based on DNA. Fossils like this hold promise to shed light on the early diversification of this group. The "Cone Whale" is a new species and was not represented amongst the fossils described in the Whitmore and Kaltenbach chapter of the Lee Creek IV volume - I've only seen a couple of other earbones of this taxon, so it is safe to say that this is the rarest baleen whale from the mine (and hence, a very lucky find). Lee Cone graciously donated this specimen to our museum in October 2016 and we've been painstakingly caring for it, and attempting to further reassemble fragments of the specimen. Turns out, Lee was nearly exhaustive in his efforts, and we've only been able to match perhaps 10% of the isolated fragments. The entire skeleton is highly fractured because it went through a dragline and was dumped - yet all the bones stayed in approximate position. Many parts were found by bulk screening of sediment. Come see the "Cone Whale" at College of Charleston soon - it opens to the public today for the first time ever! "Like" our page on Facebook or follow us on twitter for more frequent museum news and updates! -Bobby Boessenecker, Ph.D. College of Charleston Charleston, SC
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hello everyone, I need your help to identify this vertebra. it comes from Italy, in particular from Castell'Arquato, region Emilia-Romagna. this area is famous for cetacea, who lived there when the area was under the sea (in pliocene). can anyone help me?
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