Hello everyone, I am Benjamin Ramassamy, a new PhD from France working at the Museum of Natural History and Palaeontology in Gram. My project is about the evolution of beaked whales and especially what clues the specimens from the Gram formation can bring in our understanding of their history.
The beaked whales are the 2nd most diversified family among Cetaceans with at least 21 extant species. Still, we know almost nothing about them. It is due to their ecology: they are specialized to perform deep dives for food foraging, which makes them difficult to observe. Recent studies show that this family was more diversified in the past in terms of morphology and species, but the group was already specialized to the life in depth early in its history.
On Wednesday, the 9th of April 1986, a new fossil whale was discovered in the Gram claypit. It took 4 days to dig it out and it has been identified as a beaked whale. This discovery is particularly interesting: indeed, at this period (10 million years ago), Denmark was under water, but it was shallower than where beaked whales are foraging today. Why is a member of a family of deep divers present here? It is one of the questions I want to answer. Currently, the bones constituting the beak of these whales are very dense. This has been hypothesized to be an adaptation for deep diving, but it is also present in the Gram specimen. The function of these dense bones was probably more complex and I expect to find the answer in the material that I am studying.
This work is important to better understand the past ecology of this group, but it also valorizes the fossil register of the south of Jutland: the Gram claypit has already shown its richness with the discovery of several exclusive species from here. It is important to preserve this fossil record. Palaeontology gives us the possibility to study morphological changes through time, a data, only available with fossils. It is another way to understand the situation of the beaked whales today: how they adapted to their present ecology. Understanding how they reacted to environmental changes can validate models trying to predict how they will react in the future.
Paleontology is not only for scientists: everyone can participate. It’s making the work in Gram enjoyable. I can see that people are still curious and interested about the fate of a whale that lived in the south of Jutland 10 million years ago.
