August 9, 2016

Reconstruction of Echovenator sandersi and its inner ear (Image courtesy A. Gennari 2016. All rights reserved)

An article published in the journal “Current Biology” describes a research on an ancient cetacean called Echovenator sandersi that shows how these marine mammals’ ultrasonic hearing is very ancient. A team of scientists led by Morgan Churchill of New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury, New York, used modern scanning techniques to analyze the very well preserved ear of a fossil dating from the Oligocene period.