More on those rorquals: part I is required reading. To those who
have seen this stuff before: sorry, am going through a busy
phase and no time for new material (blame dinosaurs and
azhdarchoid pterosaurs… and baby girls). Oh, incidentally, I
recently registered Tet Zoo with ResearchBlogging: I haven’t
done this before because ‘blogging on peer-reviewed research’ is
the norm at Tet Zoo, not the exception. It seems to take ages
for posts to be uploaded to ResearchBlogging – like, hours. Is
this normal? Anyway… This time we look at the basics of rorqual
morphology and at their feeding behaviour. The rostrum in
rorquals is long and tapers to a point (though it is
comparatively broad in blue whales) and, in contrast to other
mysticetes, a stout finger-like extension of the maxillary bone
extends posteriorly, overlapping the nasals and abutting the
supraoccipital (the shield-like plate that forms the rear margin
of the skull). The dorsal surfaces of the frontals (on the top
of the skull) possess large depressions w