All posts tagged with cetaceans

In the early 20th century, the British Colonial Office and the Discovery Committee of the British Government undertook a series of major investigations into the biology of whales in the Southern Hemisphere.

Have you ever been to a museum and wondered about the history of the specimens on display? If you have, then you’d probably be interested in talking to the museum’s collections managers, as their jobs include not only caring for and improving accessibility to the collections, but also serving as a living knowledge repository for information about the history of the collections. Take the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, for example. Amongst the many treasures on display in that museum are five whale skeletons suspended from the roof. Where did those specimens come from?

Cetaceans are not closely related to other aquatic vertebrates and represent a unique lineage derived from hoofed land mammals that returned to an aquatic lifestyle about 50 million years ago (Thewissen, 1998). The transition from land to water, i.e. the development from weight-bearing forelimb with five hoofed toes to tissue-encased flipper not capable to support locomotion on land, is well documented by fossils (Thewissen et al., 2001, 2009) and very different from other aquatic vertebrates. Consequently many morphological characteristics that cannot be detected in fossils have remained little documented or speculative.

The Smithsonian Field Book Project is showcasing Frederick William True in February!