Dr James Rule (L) and Dr Erich Fitzgerald (R) with the Murray River whale fossil at Melbourne Museum. Credit: Eugene Hyland. Source: Museums Victoria Dr James Rule (L) and Dr Erich Fitzgerald (R) with ...

Call it an unfinished story, but with a plot that's a grabber. It's the tale of an ancient land mammal making its way back to the sea, becoming the forerunner of today's whales. In doing so, it lost ...

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Long before whales were majestic, gentle giants, some of their prehistoric ancestors were tiny, weird and feral. A chance discovery of a 25 million-year-old fossil on an ...

A biologist explains the surprising evolutionary math behind how the blue whale became the largest animal that has ever lived ...

Long before the ocean’s largest filter-feeders roamed the seas, their smaller, sharper cousins ruled the warm shallows. One such predator, newly named Janjucetus dullardi, offers a striking glimpse ...

Groundbreaking new research from the Museums Victoria Research Institute has turned upside down our previous understanding of the evolution of the largest animals ever––baleen whales. Palaeontologists ...

The fossil record of baleen whales (Mysticeti) offers a window into one of the most dramatic evolutionary transitions among mammals. Early cetaceans evolved from terrestrial artiodactyl ancestors into ...

Did you know whales evolved from a land-based animal into an ocean-going mammal? To explore the evidence, we need to look at the desert, which may seem strange when discussing whales. The ocean once ...

Females of some whale species have evolved to live drastically longer lives so they can care for their families, new research shows. Females of some whale species have evolved to live drastically ...

The asteroid that struck the Earth 66 million years ago changed far more than life on land. Ocean ecosystems also collapsed in the aftermath of the strike, and, like the non-avian dinosaurs on land, ...