New extinct fossil dolphin was an apex predator
Added 2020-07-09 18:36:40 +0000 UTCA new 15-foot-long extinct dolphin fossil was published today!
The paleontologists that described the nearly complete skeleton gave it the name Ankylorhiza tiedemani. It was discovered in what's now South Carolina and it lived during the Oligocene epoch, around 25 million years ago. Oligocene whale skeletons are rare, making Ankylorhiza a pretty impressive find.
Ankylorhiza was like the killer whale of its time - it was an apex predator that hunted large prey. (Modern killer whales didn't evolve until about 1-2 million years ago.) It was also the first echolocating whale to occupy this ecological niche and is important for helping paleontologists understand the evolution of tail "fluke-powered, but forelimb-controlled, locomotion" in whales.
For more info, check out: https://phys.org/news/2020-07-foot-long-skeleton-extinct-dolphin-parallel.html and https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)30828-9#secsectitle0010
