A New Prehistoric Dolphin Species Has Been Discovered, And They Have Excellent High-Frequency Hearing Abilities
A new prehistoric dolphin species has been discovered, and it had excellent high-frequency hearing abilities that were similar to those of dolphins today.
The animal lived around 22 million years ago in a coastal area of the Miocene Paratethys Sea in what is now Upper Austria, with a variety of microorganisms, algae, mussels, snails, fishes, and relatives of squids.
The Paratethys Sea was a shallow inland sea that stretched north from the Alps. The mountains were just beginning to form at the time. Luckily, parts of the creature’s remains were preserved when it died.
The only fossil of this ancient dolphin was found by a private collector named Jürgen Pollerspöck back in 1980 at a site near Linz in Upper Austria.
The bones were later handed over to the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology in Munich for proper restoration and storage.
The dolphin was scientifically named Romaleodelphis pollerspoecki in honor of its discoverer. Only its incomplete skull has been preserved, which has an elongated snout and 102 uniform teeth.
A computer-based analysis revealed that the dolphin was most likely related to the already extinct, archaic dolphins of the Chilcacetus clade, a genus of toothed whale that lived in the waters of the Pacific region and around South America during the Miocene, which was a geologic period that lasted from roughly 23 million years to five million years ago.
“All previously known fossils of this dolphin lineage come from the northeastern Pacific and the coasts of South America,” said Dr. Gertrud Rößner, the senior author of the study and a curator of fossil mammals at the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology.
“The discovery of Romaleodelphis pollerspoecki, a putative European relative of this lineage, could therefore provide important new insights into the origin and evolution of the lineage in the earliest Miocene.”
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The dolphin skull was extremely compressed, making the examination of the anatomy very difficult. The researchers used a computed tomography scanner to conduct an anatomical reconstruction of the fossil’s inner ear. The computed tomography images yielded remarkable results.
“The shape of the well-preserved bony labyrinth in the skull indicates that Romaleodelphis pollerspoecki was able to hear high-frequency signals,” said Dr. Rachel Racicot from Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum.
This means the dolphin is one of the oldest known toothed whales that already possessed a sense of hearing similar to modern porpoises.
These animals are capable of communicating in frequency ranges that are beyond the hearing abilities of their predators, giving them a clear survival advantage.
There may also be connections with the early development of echolocation, which helps modern dolphins detect prey and obstacles through reflected sound.
The results of the study were published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
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