LAWRENCE — It was a whale of a fossil find for Fort Hays State, Kansas University and other dinosaur researchers. They have identified a large whale-like creature 30-feet long that ate prehistoric plankton more than 100 million years ago. Working from fossils found in western Kansas and from university museums including KU, researchers figured out the mystery of the dino-whale. Mike Everhart, adjunct curator of the Sternburg Museum of Natural History, at Fort Hays State, said the fossil parts and evidence for the giant fish has existed but no researcher had connected the dots or the fins until now.He says the dino-whale had long, toothless jaws and a huge mouth and long rod-like bones to support large plankton-swilling gills. An article about the dino-whale is in this week’s “Science.”
