Ocucajea

Ocucajea
Temporal range: Middle Eocene, 37 Ma
O. picklingi (top), Supayacetus (below)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Clade: Synapsida
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Infraorder: Cetacea
Family: Basilosauridae
Genus: Ocucajea
Uhen et al. 2011
Species:  O. picklingi
Binomial name
Ocucajea picklingi
Uhen et al. 2011

Ocucajea is an extinct genus of basilosaurid cetacean from Middle Eocene (Bartonian stage) deposits of southern Peru. Ocucajea is known from the holotype MUSM 1442, a partial skeleton. It was collected in the Archaeocete Valley site, from the Paracas Formation of the Pisco Basin about 37 million years ago.

The genus was named after the town Ocucaje in the Ica Province near the type locality, and the species after José Luis Pickling Zolezzi, naturalist, artist, and an important contributor to Peruvian palaeontology.[1]

Ocucajea is smaller than all other dorudontines. It differs from Saghacetus and Dorudon in cranial morphology; in Ocucajea the nasals extends farther posteriorly than the maxillae, and there is no narial process of the frontal like in Saghacetus.[2]

Notes

  1. Uhen et al. 2011, Etymology, p. 963
  2. Uhen et al. 2011, Diagnosis, p. 963

References


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Saturday, February 27, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.