Following recent blogs about Bunna Lawrie, the whale singers and feedback from quite a few people about how they identify closely with whales, I was excited to see this image in The Weekend Australian magazine. I think it gives us a clue as to why we feel so connected to them, they are our ancestors, just like Bunna says.
In Pakistan in 2000, palaeontologist Philip Gingerich from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and his team found the remains of a mother whale with her foetus still inside. In 2004, Gingerich's co-authors and others found the nearly complete skeleton of an adult male from the same species in the same fossil beds. The new species is now called Maiacetus inuus, they are each about 2.6 m long and weighed between 280 and 390 kg.
What is really interesting though, is that these fossils revealed that about 47 million years ago whales gave birth to their young on land. They figured this out because the skeletal remains of the whale foetus was positioned with its head down. Only land mammals, not aquatic creatures, give birth this way. Except in breach births human babies also emerge head first. The team thinks that Maiacetus fed at sea and came ashore to rest, mate and give birth. Whales today birth tail first so 47 million years ago they were more like sea lions. For modern whales a tail first delivery is best for an air breathing aquatic baby animal who needs to get to the surface quickly.
Maiacetus inuus is a member of the Archaeoceti, a group of cetaceans that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises. They predate modern toothed and baleen whales. Archaeocetes had mouths full of several types of teeth, as well as nostrils near the nose tip. Both features are seen in land mammals today but not in whales.
Like other archaeocetes, the newly discovered whale was equipped with four legs modified for foot-powered swimming (like climbing, or scrambling up a steep hill but in water). While it was likely the whales could support their weight on their flipper-like limbs, they probably couldn't go far on land.
The fossil is the first extinct whale and foetus discovered and sheds light on the lifestyle of ancient whales as they made the transition from land to sea during the Eocene Epoch (between 54 and 33 million years ago).
If you want to know more there is a short video on the Live Science website.
