[OANNES Foro] PERU: Fossil Whale Found Surrounded by Prehistoric Puke

Mario Cabrejos casal en infotex.com.pe
Lun Nov 2 17:11:33 PST 2015


 
<http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/28/fossil-whale-found-surro
unded-by-prehistoric-puke/> Fossil Whale Found Surrounded by Prehistoric
Puke

10/28/2015

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/28/fossil-whale-found-surrou
nded-by-prehistoric-puke/

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<http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/files/2015/10/messapicetus-feeding.
jpg> Messapicetus feeding on a school of prehistoric sardines. Art by A.
Gennari.

Messapicetus feeding on a school of prehistoric sardines. Art by A. Gennari.

 

Spread along the southwestern coast of Peru, the 9.9 to 8.9 million year old
rock of the Pisco Formation has yielded some stunning fossils.
Paleontologists working there have found the bones of
<http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2010/sep/20/sperm-whales-fossils>
enormous predatory whales,
<http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2012/11/15/great-white-shark-ancest
ry-swims-into-focus/> delicately-preserved shark jaws, and
<http://www.academia.edu/2475944/New_Sea_Turtle_from_the_Miocene_of_Peru_and
_the_Iterative_Evolution_of_Feeding_Ecomorphologies_since_the_Cretaceous>
sea turtles, just to name a few highlights. But even those finds pale in
comparison to a real rarity that was announced just last month: prehistoric
whale vomit.

The unusual fossil, described by paleontologist Olivier Lambert and
colleagues, is encased in a chunk of exceptionally-hard dolomite. The stone
is so resilient, in fact, that preparing the rock away from the bones with
tools and acid proved impossible. Nevertheless, the lower jaws of the early
beaked whaleMessapicetus gregarius can clearly be seen jutting from the
rock, and surrounding those jaws are dozens of ancient sardines.

No one has found a fossil like this before. Fossil whale gut contents are
extremely rare, and the sardines scattered across the fossil block had
previously only been known from scales and other tattered remnants picked
out of the Pisco Formation. And while it's true that
<http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/11/02/auction-block-dinosaur-s
tirs-controversy-at-svp/> association doesn't always equate with interaction
when it comes to fossils, Lambert and coauthors make a solid case that the
fossil wasn't an accidental burial of a whale that came to rest on a bed of
fish. A search in the same narrow layer around the whale failed to turn up
any more fish, and, if they were anything like their modern counterparts,
the ancient sardines were filter feeders that wouldn't have been scavenging
on the whale carcass.

 <http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/files/2015/10/whale-and-fish.jpg>
The remains of Messapicetus and prehistoric sardines. From Lambert et al.,
2015.

The remains of Messapicetus and prehistoric sardines. From Lambert et al.,
2015.

 

The strongest scenario, Lambert and colleagues argue, is that
thisMessapicetus gorged itself on sardines just hours before its death. The
fish fossils are preserved along the whale's chest, throat, and mouth,
showing little to no sign of digestion. Not that all of them got buried as
gut contents. A large number of the 40-60 fish are scattered around the
whale's mouth. The cetacean heaved them up in death. This might be a clue as
to what happened to the unfortunate Messapicetus.

The fact that Messapicetus ate filter-feeding fish doesn't only end up being
a useful indicator for the timing of whale evolution - Messapicetus
patrolled coastal surface waters and was not a deep diver like its modern
beaked whale relatives - but it also provides a pathway by which the
cetacean could have been poisoned. There were toxic algal blooms
<http://paleocreations.com/buy.php?imagID=438&rp=/imagePage.php?page=3>
during prehistory just as there are today, and the sardines could have fed
on crustaceans that had in turn eaten the algae, eventually passing the
toxins up through the food web to theMessapicetus.

Unfortunately, though, no sign of toxic algae has shown up in the same rock
layer as the whale and the fish. A suspect fitting the profile has yet to
appear. But the idea itself gives paleontologists something else to look
for. Multiple other Messapicetus have been found nearby, not to mention the
various other marine creatures, and toxic algal blooms have been blamed for
<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/02/140227-ancient-whale-beache
d-stranding-fossil-animals-ocean-science/> other aggregations of prehistoric
whales. The fatally-queasy whale could be the initial sign of ancient
killers almost too small to see.

Reference:

Lambert, O., Collareta, A., Landini, W., Post, K., Ramassamy, B., Di Celma,
C., Urbina, M., Bianucci, G. 2015.
<http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/royprsb/282/1815/20151530.fu
ll.pdf> No deep diving: evidence of predation on epipelagic fish for a stem
beaked whale from the Late Miocene of Peru.Proceedings of the Royal Society
B. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2015.1530

 



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