Maiabalaena nesbittae, the prehistoric 15-foot-long whale that sucked prey into its mouth has been identified as the missing piece concerning the evolution of today’s huge filter-feeding whales.
About:
The researchers described fossils unearthed in Oregon of a whale named Maiabalaena nesbittae.
They called are Maiabalaena, meaning “mother whale,” a surprising intermediate evolutionary stage between modern baleen whales and their toothed ancestors.
It lived 33 million years ago.
It possessed neither teeth nor baleen, a flexible material made of keratin that modern filter-feeding whales use to strain large amounts of tiny prey out of the water for food. Maiabalaena consumed fish and squid by sucking them into its mouth.
Significance:
The evolutionary steps that led to modern baleen filter-feeding giants like the blue whale, the earth’s largest-known animal, had remained unclear till now.
Maiabalaena's position on the whale family tree indicates that tooth loss preceded baleens by millions of years.
This fossil demonstrates that the loss of teeth and the origin of baleen are separate evolutionary changes, and that the two changes did not overlap.
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