Whale fossil sports fierce teeth

The published paper from Fitzgerald is really interesting too. It's neat to have concrete fossil find that explains some part of the evolution process of a species that we didn't quite understand. This is a concrete example of a transitional fossil that people always want so bad:

It thus refutes the notions that all stem mysticetes were filter-feeders, and that the origins and initial radiation of mysticetes was linked to the evolution of filter-feeding. Mysticetes evidently radiated into a variety of disparate forms and feeding ecologies before the evolution of baleen or filterfeeding. The phylogenetic context of the new whale indicates that basal mysticetes were macrophagous predators that did not employ filter-feeding or echolocation, and that the evolution of characters associated with bulk filter-feeding was gradual.