The gargantuan plankton-eating whales of today–such as the humpback whale and the blue whale–have long been thought to be the evolutionary masters of their filter-feeding technique. New research, published online February 18 in two papers in Science , however, shows that millions of years before these massive mammals evolved, huge fish fruitfully employed the same approach–and that it wasn’t necessarily these cetaceans’ skill, but rather changing climate and new food source diversity, that allowed them to eventually dominate their domain. [More]
Following the evolutionary trail of massive filter feeders
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