Paleontologists have unearthed the most complete fossilized whale skeleton ever discovered in Taiwan, dating back more than 85,000 years, National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) said yesterday.
The 15m-long fossil was found this summer in Pingtung County’s Hengchun Township (恆春) by a team led by Yang Tzu-ruei (楊子睿), an adjunct professor at the university’s Department of Earth Sciences and an assistant researcher at the National Museum of Natural Science.
It is the second large mammalian fossil discovered in Taiwan after the Hayasaka rhinoceros found in Tainan’s Zuojhen District (左鎮) in 1971, Yang said.
Photo courtesy of National Cheng Kung University
Yang directed a team of 16 academics from NCKU and the museum, as well as foreign experts and high-school students, in unearthing the fossil.
The discovery could have implications for our understanding of how whales have adapted to environmental changes since the Ice Age, Yang said.
More than 70 percent of the whale — including the scapula, upper and lower jaw bones, and tail vertebrae — are all well preserved, he said, adding that although only the back of the skull is intact, the skeleton is still considered complete.
Judging from the shape of the scapula, Yang said the fossil could be of a blue or humpback whale from the Late Pleistocene period more than 85,000 years ago, both of which have been discovered beached in Taiwan.
Other paleontologists involved in the dig included Yao Chiou-ju (姚秋如), an assistant researcher in the museum’s biology section, and Anneke van Heteren, head of mammalogy at the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology in Germany.
Chou Wen-po (周文博), a student of archeology at NCKU who joined the excavation team, said that he and a local collector had gone to the Tougou (頭溝) area of Hungchun early this year to film a documentary.
They found many marine fossils there, including shells, crabs, sharks and whale fragments, he said, adding that he immediately went to Yang with their discovery.
In May, the team discovered four large rib bones protruding from the bottom of a deep river valley, he said.
The mandible of the whale — the heaviest of the bones, and part of the skull — is 223cm-long and weighs 334kg, Chou added.
The fossil has been safely moved to the museum, where researchers are cleaning and studying the bones, Yang said.
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