The answer comes down to whether the big-boned creature outweighs the formidable blue whale.
for paleontologist Mario Urbina after he found them in the Peruvian desert in 2010. He showed photographs to his colleagues, but the hulking shapes half-buried in sediment looked too large to be bones and created only confusion.
Urbina had found 13 vertebrae that weighed more than 220 pounds each and ribs bones that spanned nearly 5 feet. Over several campaigns, he and his colleagues transported the fossils to the Museo de Historia Natural in Lima and classified them as a new species ofwhale, an early relative to modern whales and dolphins. Urbina also dated the new specimen at 39 million years old, somewhat early for a basilosaurid.
Heavy, reinforced bones are common in shallow-dwelling sea creatures, such as manatees, which need the extra mass for ballast. Modern whales that live out in the deep ocean tend to have much lighter bones.How Did the Whale Evolve?may have swam in a manner similar to manatees or undulated the rear part of its body to produce thrust. Two vestigial hind legs may have helped it paddle along, or they may have moved little at all.
Not much is known for sure about how the innovative basilosaurids evolved. At some point, four-legged tetrapods that had lived in the water some 300 million years ago decided to submerge themselves once again, perhaps to avoid predators. This most likely happened in stages, like a reverse version of
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