August 16, 2006

The Origin of the Ridiculous Whales are ridiculous thanks to their history.They evolved from mammals on land. Their swimming, reproduction, breathing, and other adaptations to life in water are all the result of tinkering with a terrestrial animal's body. Fossil discoveries have documented how coyote-like mammals moved into the water about 45 million years ago and became more and more adapted to the marine life. Coyote howl = Whale song, anyone?

"Among living whales, baleen is an all-or-nothing affair. If you're a whale you either have baleen or you have none. All other whales are profoundly different, with teeth instead of baleen. And while toothed whales can all echolocate, baleen whales cannot. Studies on whale DNA only reinforce the sharp divide between baleen whales and other whales. All baleen whales share genetic markers not found in toothed whales. In other words, the evolutionary tree of living whales is split into two branches. Paleontologists have found many extinct members of those two branches from the past 30 million years, bearing the hallmarks of either baleen whales or toothed whales." they've now found a particularly interesting one: a baleen whale without the baleen.

posted by petebest 17 years ago
  • Fascinating stuff! Makes me want to read his book. Thanks for the link. )))!
  • Not to shit on the thread or anything, but don't forget ambergris.
  • You have a peculiar odour that is at once sweet, earthy, marine, and animalic, RTD
  • Bah. Thalassocnus could out-ridiculous any whale any day. If he wasn't extinct, that is.
  • Ack! H-dogged recursion! *breaches*
  • Hah! Now you need to find two MORE transitional species as you've introduced that many gaps!
  • MonkeyFilter: a little whiff of it, by snatches, is very agreeable; but when a man holds a whole lump of it to his nose, it is a stink and strikes you down. Hm, bit long for a tagline.
  • Transitional species? THEY ARE ALL TRANSITIONAL SPECIES! You people and your damned cladistics.
  • Be gentle with us, nunia. Some of still hold on to the antiquated notion that any group of organisms are related by descent from a common ancestor, that there is a bifurcating pattern of cladogenesis, and that a change in characteristics occurs in lineages over time. We try.
  • I'm still a big fan of punctuated equilibrium myself, although I have to admit that in most cases change is probably gradual and the entire notion of species something more like a set of eigenvector describing population in trait-space.
  • smallish bear, I was thinking this as a tagline... MonkeyFilter: at once sweet, earthy, marine, and animalic Animalic! Think of it, man...
  • Be gentle with us, nunia. *scratches Ralph behind the ear*
  • Nothing brings a wistful tear to my eye faster than a dispute over the appropriate way to describe evolutionary change. Sometimes I really regret leaving biology. I'm always turned on by evolutionary theory.
  • MonkeyFilter: THEY ARE ALL TRANSITIONAL SPECIES! Dang, missed one. Sfred, me, too. I'm especially stirred by a higly evolved masculine primate that can put his own dirty underwear in the laundry. Rowwarr!
  • KRILL (that was going to be my next post to the front page, but it might as well go here)
  • Folks, coyote howls and whale songs fer crap's sake! I'm still boggled! What if they're trying to call each other!?!?! Trying to make some kinda . . some kinda whalewolf that will be ginormous and eat us all! Aaaiigh!
  • Whale E. Coyote. Super Genius.
  • *wild applause*
  • paging Chuck Jones, paging Chuck Jones
  • *wild applause* Will you be my friend? I have a slingshot and a bag of frozen blueberries.
  • dng - very neat!
  • or is it neet? I haven't used that word in a while, but it seems the correct one for cool krill.
  • Gulp!
  • That's just way cool.