New facts have neen unearthed about a 70 million year old fish kown as the Bonnerichthys by paleontologists. It is now thought that these fish fed by filtering small organisms from the water around them, much like the baleen whales of today. These several metres long fish opened their mouth to let everything come in, then would filter out the water through their gills with only the food left in their food. Modern aquatic animals such as the manta ray, whale sharks, and baleen whales use this process. Fossils of these fish have been found in Asia, Europe, and North America, where old seas used to exist. These fish lived from 170 million to 65 million years ago according to Matt Friedman of Oxford University. This was the middle of the Jurassic Era to the end of the Cretacious Era when the dinosaurs died out. The article appeared in this week's Science journal.For some reason it does not make sense to me that fossils are still being discovered and cared about because they do not provide any help whatsoever to the modern global crisis. They are only adding to millions of documents worth of information on ancient prehistoric animals and other life. Learning about the prehistoric environment could be of some help to finding future problems by looking at nature's patterns. But problems aren't solving current problems. However there is potential in this type of work of finding some missing link between modern whales or fish and past ones. Maybe we can save today's animals and not let the same thing happen again.
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