Tag: ocean
Quick Bite Field Guide: Weird Whales and Swimming Sloths
Marine mammals are fascinating beasts and the subject of our latest Quick Bite episode! Whales, manatees, seals, otters…they’ve all gone back to the water and evolved all kinds of spectacular adaptations to making a living in a soggy setting. Toothed whales evolved an ability to “see” the underwater world around them using echolocation – basically sonar – to track prey with high-pitched sounds a …
Filed under: Cenozoic, Cetacea, Convergence, Eocene, Field Guide, Fossils, Functional Morphology, Marine, North America, Oligocene, Paleontology, Pliocene, Podcast, South America, Xenarthra, dolphin, echolocation, marine biology, ocean, porpoise, sloth, whale
Quick Bite Field Guide: The Alien Turtle and Ancient Color
Meet Alienochelys selloumi, a giant, snorkel-nosed turtle with powerful, shell-crushing plates in its massive beak! The distant relative of the largest turtle alive today, the leatherback sea turtle, Alienochelys swam the ancient ocean of North Africa at the very end of the Age of Dinosaurs (the Late Cretaceous). It was found in the same rocks as Ocepechelon, the “whale turtle” discussed in our fi …
Filed under: Africa, Cretaceous, Field Guide, Fossils, Functional Morphology, Marine Reptiles, Paleontology, Reptiles, Turtles, ocean, sea turtle
Quick Bite Field Guide: Ocepechelon the Whale Turtle
Meet Ocepechlon, one of the strangest turtles to ever paddle the open ocean in our first Past Time Quick Bite! This post is the visual companion to our podcast episode “Quick Bite: Ocepechelon the Whale Turtle.” To listen to the episode you can subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, download the episode here, or stream the podcast on your computer or phone by going here. However you listen, brace you …
Filed under: Africa, Cretaceous, Marine, New species, Turtle, ocean, sea turtle
