abstract
| - Blunt-snouted dolphin (Platalearostrum hoekmani, "Albert Hoekman's spoon-rostrum") is a prehistoric pilot whale known from a single specimen, consisting of a partial rostrum, partial maxilla, partial premaxilla, and partial vomer. The fossil was discovered by Albert Hoekman on board a fishing trawler crew in the North Sea in 2008 and described in 2010 by Klaas Post and Erwin J.O. Kompanje. The blunt-snouted dolphin is believed to have had a balloonlike structure atop its rostrum and is estimated to have lived during the early or middle Pleistocene. The 2.5-million-year-old species was named Hoekman's blunt-snouted dolphin after Albert Hoekman, the Dutch fisher who trawled up a bone from the creature's snout in 2008.Measuring up to 20 feet (6 meters) long, the newfound dolphin had an extremely short and spoon-shaped snout that supported a large, high, and protruding forehead. In looks and size, the new species was similar to modern pilot whales—although its head was much more bulbous, said study author Klaas Post, an honorary curator at the Natural History Museum Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Post and colleague Erwin Kompanje suspect that Hoekman's blunt-snouted dolphin may have been a direct ancestor or at least a very close relative of today's pilot whales.As with today's pilot whales, the team also suspects that the new dolphin used its large forehead for echolocation, a biological form of sonar that allows dolphins and some whales to navigate in murky conditions. Its scientific name was distracted from Latin (platalea = spoon and rostrum = snout).
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