Latest Basilosaurus Stories

  Scientists affiliated with the University of Michigan found that skewed skulls may have helped early whales find the direction of sounds in water. Asymmetric skulls are a well-known characteristic of the modern whale group known as "odontocetes" or toothed whales. These whales have modified nasal structures that help produce high-frequency sounds for echolocation. The other modern whale group known as "masticates," or baleen whales, has symmetrical skulls and does not...

There's a whale of a new display at the University of Michigan Exhibit Museum of Natural History, a leviathan that represents a scientific saga of equally grand proportions.A complete, 50-foot-long skeleton of the extinct whale Basilosaurus isis, which lived 37 million years ago, now is suspended from the ceiling of the museum's second floor gallery and will reign over an updated whale evolution exhibit scheduled to open in April 2011."It's a spectacular fossil," said Exhibit Museum...

CAIRO, Egypt -- University of Michigan paleontologist Philip D. Gingerich and colleagues at the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA) announced April 10 the successful excavation of an unusually complete and well-preserved skeleton of the 40 million-year-old fossil whale Basilosaurus isis.   The new skeleton is 18 meters (50 feet) long and was found in Wadi Hitan in the Western Sahara of Egypt. The first Basilosaurus fossil was found in 1905 but no full skeleton has been...