Image TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage TileImage Tile
Image size: 5632x7680 Scale: 35% - PanoJS3
Page overview thumbnail

Article text

Antarctic
fossil find
identified
HOBART: A fossil skull ofa
viously unknown dolphin-1 ike iii;tr;<
mal has been found in the Australian
Antarctic Territory.
In itself the fossil skull cnuki .nid
a new chapter to the evolutionary
history of whales and dolphins. It
may be from a family now extinct.
The Antarctic Division's head of
research, Dr Pat Quilty, came upon
the fossil on Marine Plain, eight kilo
metres from Davis Station, in Febru
ary.
The identification, disclosed yesier
day. was made by a world authority
on fossil whales and dolphins. 1);
Ewan Fordyce, ofOtago University in
Dunedin, New Zealand.
Dr Quilty was leading colleagues
along a line of fossil shells at Marine
Plain when he saw what at first looked
like a shattered rock. On checking he
found the porous texture that gave the
"rock" away as fossilised bone struc
ture.
He photographed and numbered
the shattered pieces, collected ihem
and, on his return to Australia, sent
them to Dr Fordyce. who supervised
a slow reconstruction.
His staff has put together a teMimm
skull and upper jaw of the creature.
It had no teeth in that jaw, hut did
have a very pronounced beak.
"It's likely that it was about kc:r
metres long, had a small dorsal fin
adapted for diving in icy conditions,
and had rather small foreflippers and
horizontal tail flukes," Dr Fordvee
said.
The oldest fossils so far km p.I ;a
Antarctica arc from fish 350 million
years old. Dr Quilty said no previous
fossil find there had been your.;> r
than 40 million years.
The site of the discovery is a plain
of about 10 square kilometres,
covered by a thick layer of fine dust
laid down as ocean sediment when
the sea level was much higher than r
is today.
$