EUROPE: Santa Cruz County had something historical to witness that excited bone bofins around the world as workers spotted a 4-million-year-old fossilized skeleton of a whale at a construction site.
Pieces of the skull, much of the jaw, shoulder blades, arm bones and vertebrae were found.
The fossil, relatively intact and estimated to be about 25 feet long, was found Sept. 4 by a paleontologist assigned to monitor a housing development in Scotts Valley, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
It should be noted that scientists had found whale fossils in New Zealand and the University of Otago palaeontology researchers continued to rewrite the history of New Zealand’s ancient whales by describing two further genera and three species of fossil baleen whales. Their fossils were collected from rock formations in the South Island’s Waitaki river area.
They had named these newly described filter-feeding baleen whale speciesWaharoa ruwhenua, Tokarahia kauaeroa and re-identified Tokarahia lophocephalus, a poorly known species discovered in the 1950s.
As for Santa Cruz, The excavation process began Thursday, as workers using hoes, shovels, brooms and smaller tools slowly unearthed the ancient remains.
The remains belong to a mysticete whale, an ancestor to the baleen whale, said Scott Armstrong, a scientist with Paleo Solutions, a Los Angeles County-based archaeological consulting service.
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