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- Title
A Review Of North American Basilosauridae.
- Authors
UHEN, MARK D.
- Abstract
Members of the family Basilosauridae represent the earliest fully aquatic cetaceans (Pelagiceti). Basilosaurids are important to studies of cetacean evolution because, in addition to being the earliest fully aquatic cetaceans, they are thought to be ancestral to modern Odontoceti and Mysticeti (Neoceti). North American basilosaurids (Basilosaurus cetoides, Basilotritus wardii, Chrysocetus healyorum, Cynthiacetus maxwelli, Dorudon serratus, Zygorhiza kochii, and perhaps others) are known from the Gulf Coastal Plain and southeastern Atlantic Coastal Plain, from strata of middle to late Eocene age. No basilosaurids are known with certainty from the west coast of North America, nor from the east coast north of Virginia. The taxonomy, diagnoses, and distributions in time and geography are explored, reviewed and refined herein to help clarify the origin of basilosaurids from protocetids and the origin of Neoceti form Basilosauridae.
- Subjects
BASILOSAURIDAE; FOSSIL cetacea; TOOTHED whales; BALEEN whales; PALEONTOLOGY
- Publication
Bulletin of the Alabama Museum of Natural History, 2013, Vol 31, Issue 2, p1
- ISSN
0196-1039
- Publication type
Article