Search the Community
Showing results for tags 'whaleontology'.
-
When did baleen whales become large? New blog post - The Coastal Paleontologist
Boesse posted a topic in General Fossil Discussion
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 -
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
- 5 replies
-
- 12
-
- baleen whale
- cetacea
-
(and 3 more)
Tagged with:
-
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: -
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
- 1 reply
-
- 9
-
- cetacea
- desmostylia
- (and 14 more)