Browse Items (14 total)

Unlike other mammals, odontocetes and mysticetes have highly derived craniofacial bones. A growth process referred to as "telescoping" is partly responsible for this morphology. Here, we explore how changes in facial morphology during fetal growth…

The family Remingtonocetidae is a basal family of Eocene cetaceans only known from near shore marine environments of India and Pakistan. We describe a new skull for Remingtonocetus harudiensis which elucidates the anatomy and functional morphology of…

The skulls and isolated tympanics are described for the earliest whales, pakicetids, from the H-GSP Locality 62 in the Ganda Kas area in Northern Pakistan. Currently three pakicetid genera are known: Pakicetus, Ichthyolestes, and Nalacetus.…

The origin of whales (order Cetacea) is one of the best-documented examples of macroevolutionary change in vertebrates. As the earliest whales became obligately marine, all of their organ systems adapted to the new environment. The fossil record…

Odontocetes and mysticetes are two extant suborders of cetaceans. It is reported that the former have no sense of olfaction, while the latter can smell in air. To explain the ecological reason why mysticetes still retain their sense of smell, two…

In this paper we studied three related aspects of the ontogeny of the vertebral centrum of cetaceans and terrestrial mammals in an evolutionary context. We determined patterns of ontogenetic fusion of the vertebral epiphyses in bowhead whale (Balaena…

Bowhead whales are among the longest-lived mammals with an extreme lifespan of about 211 years. During the first 25 years of their lives, rib bones increase in mineral density and the medulla transitions from compact to trabecular bone. Molecular …

The Eocene cetacean genera Andrewsiphius and Kutchicetus are systematically revised, their anatomy described, and their phylogenetic position analyzed. Each genus contains a single species, A. sloani and K. minimus, and both are known only from the…

The origin and early evolution of Cetacea (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) is one of the best examples of macroevolution as documented by fossils. Early whales are divided into six families that differ greatly in their habitats, which varied from…

The origin of whales (order Cetacea) from a four-footed land animal is one of the best understood examples of macroevolutionary change. This evolutionary transition has been substantially elucidated by fossil finds from the Indian subcontinent in the…

Replying to: J. H. Geisler & J. M. Theodor 458, 10.1038/nature07776 (2009)The analysis of Geisler and Theodor confirms our main phylogenetic result, that raoellids are, or include, the sister group to cetaceans. Their study expands on our findings by…

Early cetaceans evolved from terrestrial quadrupeds to obligate swimmers, a change that is traditionally studied by functional analysis of the postcranial skeleton(1). Here we assess the evolution of cetacean locomotor behaviour from an independent…

Although the first ten million years of whale evolution are documented by a remarkable series of fossil skeletons, the link to the ancestor of cetaceans has been missing. It was known that whales are related to even-toed ungulates (artiodactyls), but…
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