I was fortunate to grow up within visiting distance of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. One item stands out in my memories from periodic visits: the blue whale. Not a live one, of course; it’s a museum, not an aquarium. Even as an inert model, the blue whale was striking to little-boy-me–which is saying something since it shares a home with numerous dinosaur skeletons. Of course, that cohabitation only helps to underline just how much bigger blue whales are than even the biggest dinosaurs or their aquatic contemporaries. Setting aside the highly exaggerated depiction in Jurassic World, even the Mosasaurus that previously occupied the blue whale’s ecological niche was only about 2/3s the size. So of course I was curious about a news story on the genes of how whales, blue and otherwise, get so big.
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