Kingdom Animalia Infraorder Cetacea Family Cetotheriidae (?) Rank Genus | Class Mammalia Parvorder Mysticeti Phylum Chordata Order Even-toed ungulate | |
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People also search for Cetotheriopsis, Mixocetus | ||
Titanocetus ("Titano whale") is a genus of extinct cetaceans closely related to the family Cetotheriidae.
Contents
Discovery
The fossil remains of Titanocetus was discovered within some marine deposits dating back to the Serravallian (middle Miocene) and belonging to the "Fumaiolo Formation" (Republic of San Marino). The whale was then described in 1900 by the Italian paleontologist Giovanni Capellini, who later (1901) named it Aulocetus sammarinensis. Over a century later, in 2006, the paleontologist Michelangelo Bisconti stated that the remains was too different from the type species of the genus Aulocetus and thus established a new genus, Titanocetus.
Description
This whale was similar in appearance to the living Balaenopteridae, although it was considerably smaller in size: the skull barely exceeded one meter in total length, while the entire animal would reached around six meters.
Considered nowadays to be a primitive member of the Mysticeti, already equipped with baleen, Titanocetus was a carrier of both modern (i.e. the rostrum, wide and flat) and ancestral characters (i.e. the squamosal and parietal bones, which occupy part of the temporal fenestra).