Ancient whales were worm food

摘要

Whale-bone-eating worms that lack guts and rely on bacterial symbionts to eat may have been as widespread millions of years ago as they are today. Nicholas Higgs at the University of Leeds, UK, and his team report that a 3-million-year-old fossil from Italy, thought to be a beaked whale, contains bore-holes left by a type of annelid worm.