Search the Community

Hey all, I realize I've been incommunicado quite a bit this year - it's been a bad one. Things got real bad at the office and both my wife and I resigned from our department and we've been working for a new nonprofit in Charleston. But, I AM alive and returning to active status here on TFF now that 1) the forum has been upgraded and is functioning and 2) I've had some breathing room and time to unwind after leaving a deeply toxic work environment. I've also made a conscious effort to get back into blogging more frequently and have written/posted quite a lot in 2023. My most recent post summarizes a bit of an interesting and ongoing debate in whaleontology: when exactly did baleen whales become gigantic? Anyone who has spent any time in the Pliocene of the Carolinas or Florida knows that baleen whale fossils that are only a few million years old are nowhere near as large as the gigantic skeletons of modern whales hanging in museums. So, what gives? I've written a blog post that goes into a fair amount of detail regarding competing ideas for the evolution of body size in baleen whales - shown above is skull width of archaeocetes, odontocetes (toothed whales) and mysticetes (baleen whales) through time. Read the whole thing here - please enjoy! And don't hesitate to ask questions, here or on the blog. https://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2023/12/obscure-controversies-in-cenozoic.html

I have a whale bulla and I am hoping to get some ID help with this. It was labeled as a Sperm Whale ear bone but after searching pretty extensively, it looks more like a Mysticeti whale to me. I am far from an expert though so I thought I would post it here and see if anybody has any thoughts on it. It was a dive find in South Carolina. It is a pretty good sized ear bone I think, about 4.8 inches long. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hey Folks, Back in August I organized a dig to excavate a Pliocene baleen whale skull from the Purisima Formation. I finally got around to putting together some blog posts about it, and here they are. Part 3 has the poor man's "time lapse" animation of the dig. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 (with animation of the excavation)