Seth Finnegan

Chemical evidence in fossilized barnacles indicates that whales' migration routes have remained the same for hundreds of millennia, finds a new study led by doctoral marine paleobiology student Larry Taylor. Examining the unique isotope signatures left in modern and fossilized barnacle shells, which reveal the bodies of water crustaceans passed through, allowed the team -- including associate integrative biology professor Seth Finnegan and colleagues from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and Pennsylvania State University -- to reconstruct the migration routes of the whales that carried them. "The signals we found in the fossil barnacles showed us quite clearly that ancient humpback and grey whales were undertaking journeys very similar to those that these whales make today," Taylor says. "It seems like the summer-breeding and winter-feeding migrations have been an integral part of the way of life of these whales for hundreds of thousands of years." For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News. Stories on this topic have appeared in dozens of sources around the world, including The Independent (UK), Tech Times, and IFL Science.