Palaeontology 🦖

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Paleontology, also spelled palaeontology[a] or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossils to classify organisms and study their interactions with each other and their environments (their /c/paleoecology. Read more...

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Smithsonian's Paleobiology website
University of California Museum of Paleontology
The Paleontological Society
The Palaeontological Association
The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology
The Paleontology Portal
"Geology, Paleontology & Theories of the Earth" – a collection of more than 100 digitised landmark and early books on Earth sciences at the Linda Hall Library

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Oligocene-Period Dolphin Had Unique Feeding Method (www.sci.news)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

So I'm no dolphin osteologist so can someone tell me how "cage-teeth" would be distinct from any more snaggle-tooth type of mouth? It seems interesting that they'd have any evidence to push them to that conclusion in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

It had widely splayed teeth which are thought to have clasped around fish, like a wide basket, which is unusual because other ancient dolphins in the area usually used their teeth to strike prey,” said University of Otago paleontologist Shane Meekin.

I’m having difficulty imagining how it would actually function, but i believe it means more like to trap smaller prey species inside the mouth and then consume whole. Almost like a super early evolution that could lead to baleen plates in filter feeding whales, although I don’t know if those are actual modified teeth or not.