New Zealand Eomysticetidae - first look

Starting in the late 1970's and early 1980's, Dr. R. Ewan Fordyce received a grant from National Geographic to start conducting extensive fieldwork on the South Island of New Zealand in search of Oligocene cetaceans and other marine vertebrates. Incidentally, non-cetaceans such as abundant penguins, sharks, and bony fish were collected as well. This fieldwork was not limited to the Oligocene, but also included forays into Paleocene, Eocene, and Miocene localities. Over the past 30 years, Ewan has established a massive collection with an astonishing number of beautiful cetaceans. Not only are these fossils beautiful in terms of their preservation, but many of them are extremely bizarre, and the assemblage as a whole includes squalodontid, squalodelphinid, ?dalpiazinid, kentriodontid, and waipatiid odontocetes, as well as several types of baleen whales (toothed mysticetes, Mauicetus and similar "cetotheres", eomysticetids, and others), and even late surviving archaeocetes. Some of these cetaceans have been described, including Waipatia and an eocene archaeocete (Zygorhiza sp.), and several other taxa are on their way to being described.

I first met Ewan in 2005 at the SVP meeting in Arizona, and I vividly remember watching him discuss how to excavate fossil whales with a chainsaw, of all things; I immediately thought it was too extreme of an excavation method for me, but after I saw it in action last monday in the field (ironically, at the same quarry the photographs from the 2005 presentation), I immediately decided I would bring this method back to the United States. In fact, it was quite funny after watching him rev up the chainsaw - an adrenaline-inducing activity in and of itself - and afterwards stating in a polite Kiwi accent "that should clean up quite nicely".

But I digress - prior to graduation from Montana State University last spring, I contacted Ewan about a Ph.D. project, and he suggested studying the large collection of eomysticetid baleen whales from the Kokoamu Greensand and Otekaike Limestone that he had established. I remembered his talk from the 2006 SVP meeting in Ottawa, part of which included a slideshow of beautiful new fossil eomysticetids. I was pretty shocked to have been offered such a beautiful (and large!) collection of fossils to study. The family Eomysticetidae was named by Al Sanders and Larry Barnes in 2002 to accommodate the new taxon Eomysticetus, which is the most primitive described toothless baleen whale (i.e. baleen-bearing baleen whale, if that makes any sense, as opposed to a toothed baleen whale). Previously, the most primitive toothless mysticetes were some of the "cetothere" whales described by Remington Kellogg from the Chesapeake Group on the east coast, AKA "Kelloggitheres"; these however were much younger than any toothed mysticete (such as aetiocetids), and there was an apparently substantial morphological gap between toothed mysticetes and Kelloggitheres. My job is to fill a bit more of this gap in with more eomysticetids from the southern hemisphere- and so far, none of them seem to be identifiable as Eomysticetus, and there are probably several new genera and species represented.

Ewan Fordyce also took on another student recently, which was a total surprise for me. Even when I first got here, it sound like it would be several months away; instead, the new student arrived only two weeks after I did, and even stayed in the same temporary apartment my wife and I stayed in the first week we were here. Cheng-Hsiu Tsai, who goes by just 'Tsai', will be studying the other big group of fossil mysticetes from the Oligocene of New Zealand: Mauicetus and Mauicetus-like mysticetes, which may be the earliest Kelloggitheres. Tsai can be seen inspecting the ventral side of one of the eomysticetid skulls in the above photo.

This specimen, for example, is one of my dissertation specimens: a new taxon, with an extremely narrow rostrum, elongate dentaries, enormous temporal fossae with a long intertemporal region, and really weird squamosals.

Yours truly, examining the extraordinarily freaky squamosals of the specimen.

Tsai, demonstrating the proper way to photograph a mysticete skull.

Yours truly, demonstrating how to use yourself as a scale bar. I am 5'8" tall.

The beautiful skull in oblique view.

Tsai examining the skull. The brass seam on the floor is actually a joint where the floor opens for a small elevator used to bring large fossils up from the basement. On thursday, I spent most of the afternoon lifting a really really heavy plaster jacket a total of about eight feet - this ordeal took about an hour and a half, three other students, Ewan, and our preparator, Sophie. Fortunately, when the jacket is prepared, it will hopefully be a lot lighter when it goes back downstairs.

Update: The coastal paleontologist gets married, and goes down under?

The last couple of weeks have been pretty great, and due to being so busy in relation to recent events, I've been a little slow on posting new material on here. First and foremost, I got married to my longtime girlfriend/fiancee Sarah Michalies on September 17 up at beautiful Lake Tahoe, California. The wedding was fantastic, and a lot of fun - and there were many paleontology students from around North America in attendance. Sarah and I have been together since spring 2005, and it was about time to tie the knot. Sarah and I met as undergraduates in the paleontology program at Montana State University, and have gone on all sorts of paleo field trips together.

This is not our boat, we just borrowed it for cool pictures.

The second awesome thing that happened - I was recently (i.e. on Thursday) accepted into the Doctoral program at the University of Otago in New Zealand. I applied back in late July, and the plan is to start in January. I have the fantastic opportunity to work with Dr. R. Ewan Fordyce, who has offered me a chance to study eomysticetid fossils from the south island of New Zealand. Eomysticetids are a thus far poorly known group of early baleen whales, and constitute the earliest known and earliest diverging toothless baleen whales. So far, the only eomysticetids that have been described include Eomysticetus whitmorei and Eomysticetus carolinensis from the Oligocene of South Carolina, described by Larry Barnes and Al Sanders in 2002 in the Clayton Ray memorial volume. However, in that same volume, Barnes and Sanders name another new family of early diverging mysticetes they term the Micromysticetidae; they remove Cetotheriopsis tobieni from said genus and place it in the new genus Micromysticetus, to which they also name a new species from South Carolina, Cetotheriopsis rothauseni. This family also includes the taxon Cetotheriopsis lintianus. Anyway, Micromysticetus has almost always occurred as a sister taxon to Eomysticetus wherever included in phylogenetic analyses, and I would not be surprised if the Eomysticetidae were to include these even smaller taxa.

The holotype skull of Eomysticetus whitmorei from South Carolina (borrowed from the morphobank account for Ekdale et al., 2011).

The new material from New Zealand includes a collection of eight partial and complete crania, many with dentaries, earbones, and postcrania. In addition, two species of Mauicetus may be referable to the Eomysticetidae, and part of this project will revolve around trying to ascertain whether any of these new specimens represents referable material of Mauicetus; the skulls of the two holotypes of two Mauicetus species (not including Mauicetus parki, which is not an eomysticetid) are very incomplete or have been lost, but are still known from some earbones and postcrania (and photos of the skulls). One of my tasks will almost certainly be to determine whether or not any of this new material could be designated as a neotype specimen.

The clocktower at University of Otago.

All of that interesting paleocetaceanology aside, Sarah and I are going to New Zealand!!! We'll be living in the city of Dunedin on the south island. Above you can see a photo of the clock tower at the university; the campus there looks absolutely beautiful. Granted, Traphagen Hall at MSU Bozeman is a neat old building (but totally shitty inside), but I've seen photos of the Geology Building at OU, and it looks just like another Tudor stone castle like the main building pictured above. It looks totally awesome. Furthermore, unlike my previous 8 years of schooling in Montana, it doesn't get anywhere near as cold on the south island (although Dunedin is about as far south as you can get on the south island). And lastly, there are penguins that live there! There are penguins that have rookeries on the Otago Peninsula, within a 30 minute drive from campus! Blue/Fairy penguins, the smallest known species of penguin!

This is going to be a blast, and I have a lot of work to do to get there.