An ancient beaked whale that was fossilized along with its last meal reveals how the root of today ’s deep forager hunted in shallow waters . The work , published inProceedings of the Royal Society Bthis week , is the first direct evidence of a predator - quarry family relationship between a beaked whale and near - Earth’s surface fish .
These days , the tusk - bearing peck whales with dolphinfish - similar snouts are notoriously difficult to study because they scrounge in deep pee home ground far from shore . Just a yr ago , two Cuvier ’s peck whalessmashed mammalian recordsfor both dive astuteness and continuance . One dove 2,992 meter ( more than 1.8 mil ) below the surface , and another stayed under for two hours , 17 instant , 30 seconds . But things were n’t always this way .
Olivier Lambert from theRoyal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciencesexamined what appeared to be the nine - million - yr one-time stomach contents of a serrated heavyweight unearthed last year from Late Miocene sediment in the Pisco Basin of Peru , display at Cerro Colorado . The giant fossils – which include the skull , low jaw , vertebrae , rib , and ulna – belonged to an extinct , echolocating beaked whale ancestor calledMessapicetus gregarius . It was likely an adult male between 4.1 and 4.5 meters long with a organic structure weight of 1,842 kilograms ( 4061 pounds ) .
In addition to ossified Pisces remains near the giant ’s chest of drawers region , there were also multiple Pisces around its caput ( pictured below ) . These are the most likely berth for quarry that ’s been lately immerse , or possibly regurgitated . The squad counted 40 to 60 case-by-case fish , which had an modal body duration of 38.8 centimeters ( 15 inch ) and weighting of 410 gm ( 14.5 ounce ) . Together , they count up to 24.6 kilograms ( 54 pound ) – not inconsistent with venter content analyses of similar sized modern heavyweight .
Based on the position of the Pisces along the heading and chest region and the lack of digestion Simon Marks on their remains , the researchers think this collection resulted from the whale ’s death – possibly via toxic alga poisoning – less than a few hours after capturing prey from a single school .
The fish were closely relate to today ’s Pacific sardine , Sardinops sagax , which feast on surface - dwelling , planktonic crustaceans . That means this archaic pick whale hunted in the upper part of the water tower , likely along the coast , and that the highly specialized recondite divers testify up much later . In fact , Lambert explains , the defunctness of these near - control surface flesh may have concur with the diversification of true dolphin , which dominate shallow coastal waters today .
Fossil remains of the extinct beaked whale Messapicetus gregarius and associated Pisces the Fishes Sardinops sp . cf . S. sagax get in Cerro Colorado . O. Lambert et al . , Proc . R. Soc . boron 2015
[ H / T : Science ]
