Blue Whale Ancestor Was No Gentle Giant

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO, Norway - A ferocious-looking fossil with sharp teeth found in Australia shows that ancestors of today's toothless blue whales were not all "gentle giants," a report said on Wednesday.

The 25 million-year-old fossil is of an early type of baleen whale, a group including modern humpback whales, minke whales and blue whales that feed via baleen, comb-like plates in their mouths that filter plankton from sea water.

"This bizarre, new baleen whale did not even have baleen," Erich Fitzgerald, of Monash University in Australia, said of the small whale that was probably up to 3.5 metres (11 ft 6 in) long.

 "It had teeth and was a powerful predator that captured large fish, perhaps sharks, maybe even other whales," he told Reuters.

"Some of the early baleen whales weren't gentle giants."

Most scientists have believed that baleen whales quickly evolved baleen for feeding on tiny fish and plankton after breaking from a common ancestor with toothed whales almost 40 million years ago.

Modern toothed whales include dolphins, killer whales and sperm whales -- the species made famous as the bane of Captain Ahab in Herman Melville's "Moby Dick."

"This rewrites the picture of baleen whale evolution," Fitzgerald said. The fossil was found near Jan Juc, a town in Victoria, south-eastern Australia, and dubbed "Janjucetus."

Its sharp teeth were about 3 cms (1.2 inches) long and it also had large eyes, apparently suited for hunting, according to Fitzgerald's report, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Blue whales, which can exceed 150 tonnes and grow longer than 30 metres, are the largest creatures ever to inhabit the earth -- bigger than any dinosaur. Whales evolved from land mammals, where their closest relative is the hippopotamus

Source:Scientific American.com

  KELLEY BALCOMB-BARTOK / CENTER FOR WHALE RESEARCH

Missing Orca Calf Resurfaces "alive and well"

A baby orca that vanished from sight last week was found Sunday, ending fears that the calf, believed to be just 8 days old, had died.

"We're absolutely certain that the calf is alive and well," said Kelley Balcomb-Bartok, a researcher at the Center for Whale Research on San Juan Island, after the calf was seen swimming with its pod Sunday in Boundary Pass, north of Stuart Island. The calf was first seen Aug. 13 in Haro Strait between San Juan Island and Vancouver Island, perhaps a day after it was born.

Researchers were delighted to see the baby swimming with K pod, as its birth increased the size of the southern resident orca group to 90 from fewer than 80 in 2001. The animals were listed in February as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act.

But a day later researchers spent 90 minutes with the mother and didn't see the calf. The day after that, no pod members were seen.

Researchers now believe the pod swam from the Straight of Juan de Fuca to the open ocean. The pod returned later in the week and was seen Friday by commercial tour groups. The next day, members of the pod were seen off the west side of San Juan Island on their way to the Fraser River in British Columbia, where they feed on salmon. But the baby, known as K-41, was still missing.

On Sunday, tour groups saw the baby and called the center, whose researchers went out and confirmed the calf was back with its mother.

Researchers said they may never know why the baby, about 8 feet long and 400 pounds, disappeared. Young orcas nurse for their first year and usually don't stray far from their mothers, although one K-pod baby spent time with another mother several years ago.

Maybe K-41 was just being a kid.

"It seems to be very precocious and moving around a lot," said Ken Balcomb, senior scientist at the center. "It doesn't surface with the pod. It's often totally out of sync."

Source:Seattle Times