#archeoceti

[tsukimoakid]

PERUCETUS COLOSSUS

When I read about this news, I was amazed. Actually, I'm working on a personal research. I want to create my own encyclopedia on whale ancestors. I'm really addictive to them. The more I learn, more I'm interested. So, if you have any recommandations for my readings, searchings, I'll take it!

Now that I know this new one, I can't wait to be able to read the official scientific article.

This animal could be the heaviest... EVER! More than the blue whale! Incredible, don't you think ?

Picture : (c) hyrotrioskjan on Deviantart

[queenlucythevaliant]

🧬🦕

Is it cool if I get a little personal? Let me tell you about one of the coolest things I've ever gotten to do: two summers ago, I got to see the Archaeopteryx fossil at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center, which is also the only specimen on display in North America.

Trust me when I say that the stock clip art that I chose to obscure myself is 100% representative of the face I'm making here. If anything, the smile isn't big or goofy enough.

Here's a close-up and a diagram to show up-close what I'm actually looking at. Note the impressions of wing and tail plumage!

Diagram source

You've probably at least heard of Archaeopteryx: it's a transitional genus dating to the late Jurassic and the earliest example of what we could consider a "bird" which retains many ancestral "reptilian/dinosaur" characteristics.

Now, "bird" and "reptile" are kind of arbitrary words here because reptiles are a paraphyletic group. DNA tree-building models and sequence alignment evidence demonstrate that there's simply no way to define "reptiles" which does not also include birds; the definition of a "reptile" is a sauropsid that is not a bird. Thus, we know that all birds have a reptilian common ancestor because they arose as a branch within the sauropsid clade. Archaeopteryx is an ancient sauropsid with both avian and reptilian features; this is what we mean when we call it a transitional genus. 

But why did this transitional fossil make me smile so big that my cheeks went numb? There are several reasons, I think:

Despite its transitional characteristics, most scientists consider Archaeopteryx the first bird in the fossil record. It was also the first direct evidence that birds evolved from reptilians (the first Archaeopteryx specimen was discovered just three years after On the Origin of Species was published). Just on a basic, fundamental level, this genus is of immense scientific and historical importance and standing next to it felt like meeting a celebrity.

The particular specimen that I got to see was super cool! Unlike most Archaeopteryx fossils, which tend to be preserved on their sides, this one is preserved on its stomach with its head in three-quarter view. Thus, it's the only specimen in which the palate bones are clearly visible, and it's tetraradiate (as in non-avian theropods) rather than triradiate (as in other avians.) The palate is one of the most important features in terms of saying, "yeah, we consider this a modern bird."

Its feet are also really well-preserved! The specimen I saw clearly demonstrates that Archaeopteryx didn't have a reversed toe, but does have a hyperextendable second toe. This means that unlike modern birds, it probably had limited ability to perch; instead, it had tearing claws like a dinosaur. 

But even in contrast with other important transitional fossils - say, the Archeoceti of Wadi al Hitan in Egypt, which are amphibious ancestors of modern whales - Archaeopteryx is something special. There's a certain romance to the idea of the first bird: feathers that actually enable something like flight! (Like Buzz Lightyear, Archaeopteryxes' wings were probably used for "falling with style.") But still, there's beauty in Archeopteryx that we don’t see in other transitional fossils. In his poem "The Archeopteryx's Song," Edwin Morgan captures this glory far better than I ever could:

I am only half out of this rock of scales.

What good is armour when you want to fly?

My tail is like a stony pedestal

and not a rudder. If I sit back on it

I sniff winds, clouds, rains, fogs where

I'd be, where I'd be flying, be flying high.

Dinosaurs are spicks and

all I see when I look back

is tardy turdy bonehead swamps

whose scruples are dumb tons.

Damnable plates and plaques

can't even keep out ticks.

They think when they make the ground thunder

as they lumber for a horn-lock or a rut

that someone is afraid, that everyone is afraid,

but no one is afraid. The lords of creation

are in my mate's next egg's next egg's next egg,

stegosaur. It's feathers I need, more feathers

for the life to come. And these iron teeth

I want away, and a smooth beak

to cut the air. And these claws

on my wings, what use are they

except to drag me down, do you imagine

I am ever going to crawl again?

When I first left the crag

and flapped low and heavy over the ravine

I saw past present and future

like a dying tyrannosaur

and skimmed it with a hiss.

I will teach my sons and daughters to live

on mist and fire and fly to the stars.

And like, that’s it, right? Obviously no Archaeopteryx could possibly have any concept of bird or dinosaur. No fifteen million year-old creature could have dreamed eagles or pigeons or penguins. But God did. 

God knew from eternity that a creature called Archaeopteryx would exist. He knew that it would have a dinosaur’s sharp teeth and bony tail and yet wings and feathers to glide with. He alone could imagine a world in which creatures sharing a close relative with Archaeopteryx would have more feathers for the life to come; that the lords of the skies would be in the next egg’s next egg’s next egg.

He knew that Jesus would tell his disciples to look at birds when they were worried; that Gerard Manley Hopkins would write a poem dedicated “To Christ our Lord” in which he extolled “My heart in hiding/ Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!” God knew that the albatross, so like and yet unlike Archaeopteryx, would live its life on the wing, flying over oceans ten thousand miles at a time, and that Samuel Taylor Coleridge (a devout Christian) would write a poem in which an albatross was Christlike, and that C.S. Lewis would write a book in which an albatross was Jesus and whispered courage to a little girl in the dark. God knew that one day, in the summer of 2021, I would stand beside this fossilized evidence that Archaeopteryx really lived, staring and squinting to see all its features, grinning like an idiot and thinking, “Do you imagine I am ever going to crawl again?” 

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

Please welcome Perucetus, the new - and largest- known archeoceti.

A whale of enormous proportions. While it's exact size and weight is certainly a matter of heated debates it was no doubt a really big boi. Here a quick sketch of it approaching a time traveler.