Aetiocetidae

Aetiocetidae
Temporal range: Oligocene
Aetiocetus cotylalveus, an early baleen whale from the Late Oligocene of Oregon, pencil drawing, digital coloring
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Cetacea
Suborder: Mysticeti
Family: †Aetiocetidae
Emlong, 1966[1]
Genera[2]

Aetiocetidae is an extinct family of toothed baleen whales known from the Oligocene.[3][2] The whales are from the North Pacific Ocean and ranged in size from 3 meters to 8 meters long. Many of the described specimens were discovered from the Upper Oligocene of the Japanese Morawan Formation, the largest known one from the Morawan's Upper tuffaceous siltstone. Other formally described extinct toothed mysticetis from this time are smaller, from 3 to 4 meters in length. Mysticeti with true baleen are seen in fossils from the Upper Oligocene. The monophyly of the family is still uncertain, as are the evolutionary relationship between the early toothed baleen whales (Aetiocetidae, Mammalodontidae, and Llanocetidae) and the early and extant edentulous baleen whales.[4]

References

  1. ↑ Marx, Felix G.; Tsai, Cheng-Hsiu; Fordyce, R. Ewan (2 December 2015). "A new Early Oligocene toothed ‘baleen’ whale (Mysticeti: Aetiocetidae) from western North America: one of the oldest and the smallest". Royal Society Open Science 2 (12): 150476. doi:10.1098/rsos.150476.
  2. 1 2 Tsai, Cheng-Hsiu; Ando, Tatsuro (14 April 2015). "Niche Partitioning in Oligocene Toothed Mysticetes (Mysticeti: Aetiocetidae)". Journal of Mammalian Evolution. doi:10.1007/s10914-015-9292-y.
  3. ↑ Prothero, Donald R.; Berggren, William A., eds. (2014). "18 Cetacean Evolution and Eocene/Oligocene Environments". Eocene-Oligocene Climatic and Biotic Evolution. Princeton University Press. p. 371. ISBN 9780691604954.
  4. ↑ Marx, Felix G. (25 September 2010). "The More the Merrier? A Large Cladistic Analysis of Mysticetes, and Comments on the Transition from Teeth to Baleen". Journal of Mammalian Evolution 18 (2): 77–100. doi:10.1007/s10914-010-9148-4.
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