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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.

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.

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:

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

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)