Prehistoric whale shark discovered
By connecting newly discovered fossils with overlooked specimens already existing in museums, a team of British and American researchers have discovered a new species of giant, filter-feeding fish that was the prehistoric equivalent of baleen whales and whale sharks.
Their findings, published in Science, have made a step towards resolving the conspicuous absence of suspension feeders in large segments of the fossil record from the Mesozoic era (composed of the three geologic periods during which the dinosaurs lived).
Marine suspension feeders are typically large in size and feed upon plankton suspended in the ocean, with certain modern-day species of baleen whales and cartilaginous fish (sharks and rays) possessing these adaptations to take advantage of this ecological niche.
It was previously believed that these large filter feeders had been absent for much of the age of the dinosaurs, appearing during a small segment of the Mesozoic era before mysteriously disappearing for the remainder of the era.
"There was certainly an apparent pattern - the lack of big filter feeders - but no attempt to unpack why that might be the case," writes Matt Friedman, of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford, in an email with The News-Letter. "These kinds of 'why' questions are always hard (if not impossible) to test in historical science (where we can't run the experiment again, so to speak)."
Through a chance encounter, Friedman stumbled upon the first rediscovery that spawned his study on Mesozoic large filter feeders. "I was doing some work at the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center, looking at a completely different set of fossil fishes," he said. "One of the workers there - who later became a co-author on the study - said that they were working on a very strange (and big!) fossil fish that they couldn't really make sense of, and asked me if I would be interested in taking a look at it."
"After some time examining this specimen, I 'connected the dots', and came to the realization that this was a giant suspension feeder," he said.
Their findings, published in Science, have made a step towards resolving the conspicuous absence of suspension feeders in large segments of the fossil record from the Mesozoic era (composed of the three geologic periods during which the dinosaurs lived).
Marine suspension feeders are typically large in size and feed upon plankton suspended in the ocean, with certain modern-day species of baleen whales and cartilaginous fish (sharks and rays) possessing these adaptations to take advantage of this ecological niche.
It was previously believed that these large filter feeders had been absent for much of the age of the dinosaurs, appearing during a small segment of the Mesozoic era before mysteriously disappearing for the remainder of the era.
"There was certainly an apparent pattern - the lack of big filter feeders - but no attempt to unpack why that might be the case," writes Matt Friedman, of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford, in an email with The News-Letter. "These kinds of 'why' questions are always hard (if not impossible) to test in historical science (where we can't run the experiment again, so to speak)."
Through a chance encounter, Friedman stumbled upon the first rediscovery that spawned his study on Mesozoic large filter feeders. "I was doing some work at the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center, looking at a completely different set of fossil fishes," he said. "One of the workers there - who later became a co-author on the study - said that they were working on a very strange (and big!) fossil fish that they couldn't really make sense of, and asked me if I would be interested in taking a look at it."
"After some time examining this specimen, I 'connected the dots', and came to the realization that this was a giant suspension feeder," he said.
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