Fossil foetal (proto-)whale
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- Category: In the Journals Published Date Robert Saunders Hits: 3352
Quite a few of the bloggers at ScienceBlogs have been writing about an exciting new fossil find: a newly discovered fossil ancestor of whales. The exciting thing here is that the fossil contains the remains of foetal whales. Here's the University of Michigan podcast.
The fossil confirms that Maiacetus inuus was amphibious, or at least gave birth on land, as the foetus is oriented to emerge head-first (clearly not adaptive for aquatic birth, and something not seen in present-day cetaceans).
Read the bloggers at
Read the paper at PLoS ONE (freely available)
