PALAEONTOLOGY, THE WHALE OF ZAGREB

THE WHALE OF ZAGREB (Mesocetus agrami VAN BENEDEN, 1886) The fossil remains of the whale of Zagreb have been found in marls of the Podsused quarry which date from the Sarmatian, about 13 million years ago. The remains of the whale which were lying in the depot of then National Museum were sent by Gjuro Pilar to the Professor Pierre-Joseph van Beneden (1809 – 1894) – Belgian zoologist and palaeontologist, for determination. These were the bones of the back part of skull, various vertebrae, a part of jaw and auditory system and rib fragments – in total 11 bones. In his work “Une baleine fossil de Croatie, appartenant au genre Mesocete” from 1884 Van Beneden attributed these bones to the remains of the whale from the genus Mesocetus and since at that time it was an unknown species he named it after Zagreb - Mesocetus agrami. So our whale got his name which in translation means Mesocet of Zagreb or the whale of Zagreb. Some time later Dragutin Gorjanović-Kramberger, a famous Croatian palaeontologist published his work O fosilnih cetaceih Hrvatske i Kranjske (On Fossil Cetaceans of Croatia and Carniola, 1892) in which he described all then known paleontological sites of whales in Croatia and Slovenia. He described again the species Mesocetus agrami since from the time of Van Beneden's description some new bones had been found which Gorjanović attributed to that same exemplar – the right upper arm bone, a part of the lower arm bone and the lower and upper jaw. The whale of Zagreb, Mesocetus agrami, belongs to the extinguished genus of whales - Mesocetus, to the family of Balaenopteridae, suborder Mysticeti – Baleen whales (whalebone whales). Today's whales from this family are among the biggest animals on Earth and some can reach the length of up to about thirty metres. On the basis of fossil remains – back part of the skull, upper jaw, incomplete lower jaw, right upper arm bone, part of the right lower arm bone and thirteen vertebrae it was concluded that the whale of Zagreb was about 6 metres long, which suggests that we are dealing here with a younger animal. According to the structure of jaw it can be determined that the whale most probably fed on plankton and small fishes. Dražen Japundžić