He and his colleagues were stunned to find such a rare fossil, the first ever of its kind. "To be honest, I never expected to be able to find a whale about to give birth," he said. They also found an 8.5-foot male of the same species at the site. Since the male whale was only moderately larger than the female, the researchers suspect males of this species didn't control territories or command harems. Ewan Fordyce, head of the Department of Geology at the University of Osago in New Zealand, told Discovery News, "The convincing presence of a fetus makes this a most important find." "Fetuses are rarely reported for fossil land mammals," he explained, "and as far as I know, this is the first such case for a whale or, for that matter, any fossil marine mammal." Fordyce added that the findings are timely, given the forthcoming 200th anniversary of British naturalist Charles Darwin's birth, which occurred on February 12, 1809. "Darwin would have reveled in such evidence for a major shift in the fossil record," Fordyce explained, referring to the whale's dramatic transition from land to sea. Related Links: |
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