August 24, 2016
In Cerro Colorado, located in the
Ica Desert of Peru, sedimentary sequences dating back nine million years have
been found to host the fossil skeletons of hundreds of marine vertebrates.
In 2008, remains of a giant
raptorial sperm whale, Livyatan melvillei,
were discovered at this site. In September 2014, the same international team of
researchers, guided by Giovanni Bianucci from Pisa University (Italy), found
a partial
skeleton of a mysticete whale in a rock boulder.
Besides fossil bones of
the skull and mandibles, the rock containing the skeleton showed perfect casts
of the whale baleen. The exceptionality of the finding is that the casts
provide details at the submillimetric scale, revealing under the microscope the
subtle structure of the baleen bristles. Indeed, fossilized baleen bristles
have been studied for the first time by chemical and mineralogical analyses.
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