Platyosphys

Platyosphys Temporal range: Middle Eocene
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Cetacea
Family:	Basilosauridae
Subfamily:	Basilosaurinae
Genus:	Platyosphys Kellogg, 1936
Species
P. paulsoni (Brandt, 1873) (type) P. einori Gritsenko, 2001 P. uheni? (Gol'din and Zvonok, 2013) P. wardii? (Uhen, 1999) P. aithai Gingerich and Zouhri, 2015
Synonyms
Basilotritus? Gol'din and Zvonok, 2013

Platyosphys is a genus of basilosaurine basilosaurid from Middle Eocene (Bartonian) of the eastern United States, Western Sahara, and Ukraine.

Taxonomy

The type species, Platyosphys paulsoni, was originally described as Zeuglodon paulsoni in 1873 on the basis of several vertebrae from a Bartonian-age horizon in southern Ukraine.^[1] In his 1936 monograph regarding Archaeoceti, Remington Kellogg recognized the distinct nature of the taxon and coined the new genus Platyosphys for Z. paulsoni.^[2] Another new species of Platyosphys, P. einori, was coined for vertebrae, a scapula, and rib fragments in 2001.^[3]

In the original description of Basilotritus, Platyosphys and its constituent species wee considered nomina dubia because their material was considered insufficiently diagnostic to generic or specific level.^[4] However, a 2015 paper describing archaeocetes from the Western Sahara described a new species, P. aithai, and reiterated the diagnostic nature of the type species of Platyosphys, suggesting that Basilotritus might be a synonym of Platyosphys.^[5]

References

1. J. F. Brandt. 1873. Uber bisher in Russland gefundene Reste von Zeuglodonten. Melanges biologiques Bulletin de l'Academie imperials des Sciences de St. Petersbourg 9:111-112
2. R. Kellogg. 1936. A Review of the Archaeoceti. Carnegie Institution of Washington 482:1-366
3. V. Gritsenko. 2001. New species Platiosphys [Platyosphys] einori (Archaeoceti) from Oligocenic deposits of Kyiv. Visnyk Heolohila Kyivskyi Natsionalyi Universytet Imeni Tarasa Shevchenka 20:17-20
4. Pavel Gol'din and Evgenij Zvonok (2013). "Basilotritus uheni, a New Cetacean (Cetacea, Basilosauridae) from the Late Middle Eocene of Eastern Europe". Journal of Paleontology 87 (2): 254–268. doi:10.1666/12-080R.1.
5. Philip D. Gingerich and Samir Zouhri (2015). "New fauna of archaeocete whales (Mammalia, Cetacea) from the Bartonian middle Eocene of southern Morocco". Journal of African Earth Sciences 111: 273–286. doi:10.1016/j.jafrearsci.2015.08.006.