First Friday: “Whales” from the Age of the Dinosaurs

Description

Giant, toothless bony fishes dominated the seas for over 100 million years during the “Age of the Dinosaurs.” Like modern baleen whales, these ancient fishes subsisted on plankton and other tiny creatures—called suspension feeding. Once thought to have been a short-lived evolutionary failure, new research suggests that these giant suspension-feeding fishes existed for a period nearly three times longer than baleen whales. This talk will explore how these giant fishes evolved and lived, and examine why such a successful group eventually went extinct.