St Andrews scientists ask if whales have 'dialects'

St Andrews scientists ask if whales have 'dialects'

Members of the public are being asked by scientists at the University of St Andrews to help them investigate the way whales communicate.

Researchers Rush to Recover Whale Fossils From Highway Project

Researchers Rush to Recover Whale Fossils From Highway Project

In Chile's dry, hot, desert-like Atacama Region, a group of Smithsonian researchers are digging up whales. The fossil site, near the port city of Caldera in northern Chile, was discovered in late 2010 by a construction company expanding the Pan-American Highway. In a road cut, the workers discovered complete skeletons of baleen whales, says paleobiologist Nick Pyenson, the curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The company agreed to grant the site a brief reprieve, allowing Pyenson to coordinate a short-term excavation of the fossils

Whale fossils show important characters of the transition to water

Link: Whale fossils show important characters of the transition to water

 Decorative stone is often used in buildings for its strength and durability but is not often thought of as a hiding place for fossils. If not for an observant Italian stonecutter, a recently discovered fossil whale specimen from Egypt might have become part of the edifice of some new skyscraper rather than the focus of a scientific study. This fossil skull and partial rib cage, described in the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, show transitional features of a new species of early whale and hint at how it became a fossil in the first place.

News for Your Neurons Sperm Whales Really Do Learn From Each Other

Link: News for Your Neurons Sperm Whales Really Do Learn From Each Other

Sperm whales, Earth’s biggest-brained animals, live in far-flung clans with lifestyles so different and vocalizations so complex that it’s natural to think they have culture.

But is that really true? Might sperm whales simply be following genetic instructions? Could their “culture” really be a set of instinctive, mechanical imperatives?

Researchers led by Hal Whitehead of Dalhousie University and Luke Rendell of Scotland’s St. Andrews University, two of the world’s foremost sperm whale biologists, have asked just this question.