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Double Your Impact for Marine Animal Rescue & Response

On a chilly day this past December, the WDC North America team celebrated the first...
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WDC’s Education Wishlist = Cleared!

To the WDC Community, I want to thank you so much for your support of...
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Looking forward for Southern Resident orcas in 2023

Hysazu Photography 2022 was a big year for Southern Resident orcas - 2022 brought the...
Credit: Seacoast Science Center

The Unlikely Adventure of Shoebert, a Young Grey Seal Who Visited an Industrial Park Pond

Credit: Seacoast Science Center In mid-September, our stranding partners in northern Massachusetts were inundated with...
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The power of harbour porpoise poo

We know we need to save the whale to save the world. Now we are...
Right whale - Regina WDC

Whale and Dolphin Conservation: Change Through Policy.

WDC focuses on education, research, conservation projects, and policy work to create a sustainable future...
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Clear WDC’s Amazon Wishlist for Giving Tuesday

UPDATE: We are thrilled to report that everything was donated off of our Amazon Wishlist...
Fin whales are targeted by Icelandic whalers

Speaking truth to power – my week giving whales a voice

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting is where governments come together to make decisions about whaling...

Dolphin fossil holds the key to an evolutionary mystery!

Earlier this year when scientists discovered a whale graveyard in the Atacama region in Chile, we knew that we had embarked on exciting times in marine mammal science as our knowledge of extinct species and cetacean evolution was about to be radically expanded – what we didn’t realise at the time was just how rapidly that expansion would happen.

On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, researchers at Waseda University in Japan have determined that contrary to popular belief, dolphins have been around for twice as long as we had originally thought. By studying a fossil of a skull fragment from a dolphin, found in a Japanese river back in 1970, they were able to date dolphin origins all the way back to the late Miocene period some 8 to 13 million years ago.

This discovery has helped dispel one of the great mysteries of dolphin evolution as until now there has always been an inconsistency between the fossil records of dolphins (to date all have shown dolphins to have originated less than 6 million years ago) and molecular studies (which suggested that they actually originated between 9 and 12 million years ago). 

This new (or more correctly, old) species of dolphin has been named Eodelphis kabatensis – and it has the honour of being the earliest yet the latest dolphin species to be described to science.

The location of the fossil find is also important as although this work is in its infancy, and more specimens need to be discovered, the presence of Eodelphis in the Pacific Ocean suggests that dolphins may have had their origins in the Pacific. Then again … perhaps there are even older dolphin fossils out there somewhere just waiting to be discovered?