Hoplocetus

Hoplocetus is an extinct genus of raptorial cetacean of the sperm whale superfamily, Physeteroidea.[3] Its remains have been found in the Miocene of Belgium, France, Germany and Malta, the Pliocene of Belgium and France, and the Pleistocene of the United Kingdom and South Carolina.[1]

Hoplocetus
Temporal range: Middle Miocene-Early Pleistocene
~16.0–1.8 Ma [1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Infraorder: Cetacea
Superfamily: Physeteroidea
Family: incertae sedis
Genus: †Hoplocetus
Gervais, 1852
Species
  • H. borgerhoutensis du Bus, 1872
  • H. crassidens Gervais, 1852 (type)
  • H. curvidens Gervais, 1852
  • H. obesus Leidy, 1868[2]
  • H. ritzi Hampe, 2006[3]

Dentition

The teeth of Hoplocetus are massive (95-150 mm in length; 27-47 in maximum diameter), robust and have a short enamel cap on the crowns.[3] They are somewhat larger than those of modern orcas[4] but considerably smaller than those of macroraptorial sperm whales, such as Zygophyseter, as well as those of Scaldicetus caretti.[5] They display a large degree of abrasion, suggesting a highly predatory niche comparable to that of modern orcas.[3] The genus of the latter, Orcinus, first appears in the middle Pliocene and it may have eventually replaced Hoplocetus.[3]

These teeth features also characterize the other extinct toothed whale genera, Diaphorocetus, Idiorophus and Scaldicetus, sometimes placed with Hoplocetus in the subfamily Hoplocetinae.[6] However, some of these taxa are fragmentary and have been used as wastebasket taxa for non-diagnostic material of stem physeteroids.

gollark: Also, that's price discrimination and very dodecahedral.
gollark: Intelligence 407.5 workaround: just buy one bottle, leave the store, buy another one, and so onb.
gollark: > made in china> made
gollark: That makes sense, because the economy is of course just some abstract bunch of numbers which go up and down and not at all to do with stuff like "producing food" and "running hospitals".
gollark: I don't think it's even 33 millionths of the sun. The sun outputs... yottawatts, or something?

References
  1. "Hoplocetus in the Paleobiology Database". Fossilworks. Retrieved 2018-11-11.
  2. Leidy, J. (1868). "Notice of Some Extinct Cetaceans". Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 20: 196--197. Retrieved 2018-11-12.
  3. Hampe, O. (2006). "Middle/late Miocene hoplocetine sperm whale remains (Odontoceti: Physeteridae) of North Germany with an emended classification of the Hoplocetinae". Fossil Record. 9 (1): 61–86. doi:10.1002/mmng.200600002.
  4. Bradford, A. (2014-11-20). "Orcas: Facts About Killer Whales". Live Science. Retrieved 2018-11-12.
  5. Reumer, J. W. F.; Mens, T. H.; Post, K. (2017). "New Finds of Giant Raptorial Sperm Whale Teeth (Cetacea, Physeteroidea) from the Westerschelde Estuary (Province of Zeeland, the Netherlands)" (PDF). Deinsea. 17: 32–38. Retrieved 2018-11-12.
  6. Toscano, A.; Abad, M.; Ruiz, F.; Muñiz, F.; Álvarez, G.; García, E.; Caro, J. A. (2013). "Nuevos Restos de Scaldicetus (Cetacea, Odontoceti, Physeteridae) del Mioceno Superior, Sector Occidental de la Cuenca del Guadalquivir (Sur de España)" [New Remains of Scaldicetus (Cetacea, Odontoceti, Physeteridae) from the Upper Miocene, Western Sector of the Guadalquivir Basin]. Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Geológicas (in Spanish). 30 (2).
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.