Jan 30, 2024
Aetiocetus (Original Whale) was an early baleen whale that lived sometime during the Oligocene epoch 34-23 million years ago in the Pacific Ocean. Aetiocetus is unique for having both teeth and baleen, representing the transition between modern baleen whales and their toothed ancestors. How Aetiocetus fed is still up for debate, it may have hunted prey like modern toothed whales, or it may have practiced bulk feeding like its modern descendants, gulping loads of water and filtering in the small organisms like plankton and krill, perhaps even a mix of the two. Unfortunately we may never know for sure.
