Antarctic white-out drove baleen whale evolution

• Autores: Michael Marshall
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 2914, 2013, pág. 15
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Fossil plankton evidence suggests that ocean life around Antarctica was transformed when the South Pole first froze over. The changes may have driven the evolution of baleen whales, including the blue whale. Antarctica was warm and lushly forested until around 34 million years ago. Then, within just 200,000 years, glaciers spread over the entire continent. Sander Houben of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and colleagues studied fossilized dinoflagellates--a type of plankton--in sediment cores from the Antarctic seabed to find out how these changes affected marine life. The fossil record showed that before the ice emerged, some dinoflagellates produced their own energy via photosynthesis; others fed on photosynthesizing algae. When the ice spread, the photosynthesizing kind died out, leaving only the algae feeders.