There was terrific turmoil at the top of the urine ’s aerofoil . An island of flesh , once populate and swim gracefully through these ancient sea , dock silently , at times yanked violently to the side or jolted upwards by forces below it .
Pelagornis miocaenus , an tremendous prehistoric sea bird encircle idly above the panorama , may have point out the whale carcass in its entirety , partially let out to the air , but much of it submerged . It would have reckon the many sharks encircling it . Some of them grab mouthfuls , shaking the flesh off of the torso , and darting away . Others may have attacked the whale from below , propelling themselves teeth first into the stagnant mammalian . The head and schnozzle of a lone great blank shark ( Carcharodon carcharias ) may have appeared amongst the waves , bite off chunks from the drained hulk ’s side .
A whale this size is n’t consume in a day , no matter how hungry the sharks encircle it were . With the tastier options — the clapper and most of the fatty flesh — eaten away , the carcase was begin to come apart . The head had long since detached , its skull drifting down to the the seafloor . Other component part were carried off to be eaten , the os dispose elsewhere . Eventually , whatever gases or productive content kept the carcass afloat would fool , and it would sink .
The whale fossils.Photo: Photos courtesy Carlos Jaramillo
One of the whale ’s flipper ’s , in shreds , had already sink to the sand . Ancient Pisces may have snacked on the ribbon of pulp still clinging to the exposed bones . Marine invertebrates such as louse and bryozoans attached themselves onto what remained .
In time , the remnants of this flipper were covered by the seafloor .
Those same remnants discover daylight again over 2 million year later , in September 2016 . Professor Joaquín Atencio , two of his students , Joel Orocú and Patricio Pimentel , and Joel ’s father , Félix Orocú , discovered the exposed fogey whale finger cymbals when the lunar time period was out in the Burica Peninsula of Panama .
The fossil hunters: Félix Orocú (red shirt); his son, Joel Orocú (holding shovel); and students from Colegio Punta Burica and Escuela Primaria Caña Blanca.Photo: Photos courtesy of Carlos Jaramillo
After spotting the fogy in the coastal outcropping , Atencio called Carlos Jaramillo , a geologist and paleontologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute , who in turn put together a team of scientists to excavate them . They uncovered several disjoint fossil hulk bone and a fogy shark tooth nearby .
The research into these bones culminated in apaperpublished latterly in the daybook Palaeontologia Electronica : “ Shark - cetaceous trophic interactions during the recent Pliocene in the Central Eastern Pacific ( Panama ) . ”
The authors square up that these bones belong to a type of Balaenopterid , a family of filter - feeding whales that let in today ’s kyphosis and naughty whales . These bones alone are not enough to determine the exact metal money or the size of the maritime mammalian , but these particular bones did offer tantalizing clues into the last minute of this animal .
Graphic: Cortés et al.
“ When we collect the whale fossils , ” explained lead author Dirley Cortés , a paleobiologist at Redpath Museum , McGill University , “ from the start we were really surprised about the giant sizing of the appendicular bones . After a while of review , we realized some of the bones had strange serrated marks across the surface , we came up with the unrestrained hypothesis of shark pungency stigma , but it occupy us more time to actually sustain it . ”
One such bone , they reported , has 26 separate bite traces upon it . hit the books such suggestion is the earmark of ichnology , a airfield that differentiate in the grooves , scratch , edges and prints leave behind by living species . What might front like just a bunch of cleft on ancient bone to the average person reads like an entire speech to ichnologists , one that provides remarkable sixth sense .
“ Some of the sting traces show these very exquisitely space parallel line , ” articulate Anthony Martin , ichnologist at Emory University , “ which is distinctive of the kind of damage you would get from a toothed tooth . That equipment casualty is broadly associated with shark . ”
Image: Cortés et al.
lacking conclusive proof one way or the other , the authors guardedly aim that at least two dissimilar sharks may have scavenged upon this giant , perhaps dandy clean shark . Jorge Velez - Juarbe , maritime mammal curator for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County , explained that this assumption is due to the size difference between the chomp ghost .
The scenario describe at the startle of this article may or may not have actually occurred . While fossils tell us a swell deal , they do n’t let on every detail . We do n’t have a go at it whether the whale was already numb at the time of the shark bites ; we do n’t make out whether it was scavenge while float on the surface or whether it had already sunk and was eat on on the seafloor . We also do n’t bang with foregone conclusion which species of shark gnawed on its flesh .
“ From what we be intimate , at the end of the Pliocene , there is an interesting commixture of more mod zoology with other more ‘ antiquated ’ or extinct groups , ” Velez - Juarbe tell . “ This of course of action changed a bit at the destruction of the Neogene , when there seems to have been a leatherneck megafauna extinction consequence . ”
Dirley Cortés, in white hat, with the whale fossils.Photo: Photos courtesy of Carlos Jaramillo
In other watchword , some of the fauna living in ocean 3.6 million to 2.58 million years ago are very much a part of our world today . We have filter - feed whales and great blanched sharks off of our coast . The story these fogey tell is one we can outright imagine and infer .
Today ’s sharks are not known to attack full - grown whale . If their ancestor behaved in similar ways , then it is reasonable to assume ancient sharks salvage — rather than killed then ate — this ancient whale . The bite trace support this .
“ The vast bulk of sting traces on os are scavenge , ” Martin said . “ In many representative , and I retrieve in this instance , too , there might not be enough flesh to prevent the teeth from meet the bone . Once the teeth are reach the ivory , that means either that bone is exposed or the flesh is fragile enough that the tooth can adjoin pearl . ”
“ This finding is of scientific importance not only because we were able-bodied to tell much about shark feed on giant [ in prehistorical time ] , but because of its temporal setting . As we point out in the paper , the inherited diversity of cetaceans , and peculiarly mysticetes , declined around the Pliocene - Pleistocene boundary , an model of a global upset event in the leatherneck megafauna , ” wrote Cortés in an e-mail . “ Fossil marine mammals , like the one preserve here , will be useful for understanding the dynamic of the marine fauna in one of the most decisive menstruum of Earth history , the Plio - Pleistocene modulation . ”
Cortés emphasized the importance of further exploring the Burica Peninsula in Panama and other nearby sites . While whale fossils are common throughout the earth , discovery have been comparatively few in key and South America . The giant specimen described here is actually the first nautical mammal recorded from the Neogene ( a flow that spanned from 23 million age ago to 2.58 million year ago ) in the Burica Peninsula .
“ One of the ground , ” Cortés offered , “ may be the want of fully exposed Cenozoic outcrops in particular in the Pacific side of Central America , which makes it hard to prospect this succession and get datum . Another of import reasonableness is the telephone number of researcher per capita . ”
She draw how paleontology is still an emerging scientific discipline in country such as Panama and Colombia . To illustrate this further , she explicate that out of “ 1 million citizens , Colombia has less than 90 scientists , of which a minimum amount is involved in paleontology . Without enough palaeontologist , research becomes a challenge although privileged way of liveliness . And the panorama for woman scientist does not look so encouraging either . ”
“ Something paleontologists always highlight is that no matter how complete , what weigh most is the awing story that fossil has to tell us , ” wrote Cortés .
The account yet to be recite — the fossils cover for gazillion of years — are just waiting to be found .
Jeanne Timmons ( @mostlymammoths ) is a freelancer writer free-base in New Hampshire who blog about paleontology and archeology atmostlymammoths.wordpress.com .
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