On this week’s episode Dr Ashley Scarlett chats with guest Dr Carlos Peredo about The evolutionary history of marine mammals and the extreme adaptations they developed for eating their prey.
Ashley’s Notes__________
how they became what they are today
Changes in feeding ecology
Studying fossill whales (megafauna)- palaeontology
(Ancestral whales) primitive whales – Basilosaurs BACIL O SOURS
meaning “king lizard
The earliest specimens were found in Alabama in the 1830s,
functional pelvic limb
sharp-toothed creature that lived 40-35 million
Extreme modifications- and adapting to the marine life
How the mammal body change to become a marine mammal represent major evolutionary innovations
let’s generally do how marine mammals adapt to feeding in the water, with our biggest emphasis on whales and pinnipeds
The evolutionary history of aquatic mammals
departed from using ancestral terrestrial feeding mechanisms and adopted novel ways of feeding
Short Bio:
Dr. Carlos Peredo is an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Biology and a University of Michigan Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Scholar. His research focuses on understanding the macroevolutionary patterns associated with mammals returning to a marine environment. Carlos studies major ecological transitions in Earth history and how they drive the evolutionary origins of key innovations in mammals to facilitate life in the water. Currently Carlos is studying the loss of mastication in two lineages of marine mammals: whales and pinnipeds.