Ontocetus
Ontocetus | |
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Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Mammalia |
Order: | Carnivora |
Clade: | Pinnipedia |
Family: | Odobenidae |
Genus: | †Ontocetus Leidy, 1859 |
Species: | †O. emmonsi
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Binomial name | |
†Ontocetus emmonsi Leidy, 1859
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Ontocetus is an extinct genus of
Taxonomy
The type species, Ontocetus emmonsi, was named by Joseph Leidy in 1859 on the basis of a single tusk-like tooth (USNM 329064) collected by Ebenezer Emmons from the early Pliocene (Zanclean) Yorktown Formation of North Carolina.[2]
In the meantime, marine mammals fossils were being unearthed in
In 2008, all specimens of Pliocene odobenids from the North Atlantic region were reviewed following the rediscovery of the Ontocetus emmonsi holotype in the 1990s. T. huxleyi, A. cretsii, A. antwerpiensis, A. antverpiensis, A. africanum, and P. alleni were declared junior synonyms of O. emmonsi based on comparisons with USNM 329064. T. koninckii, however, was found to be undiagnostic and designated a nomen dubium.[12]
Misassigned species
As a side note, Ontocetus oxymycterus was named by Remington Kellogg in 1925 on the basis of USNM 10923, collected from the middle Miocene (Serravallian) Monterey Formation in Santa Barbara, California.[6] It was recombined as Scaldicetus oxymycterus by Kohno and Ray (2008), since O. emmonsi was odobenid and O. oxymycterus was physeteroid.[12] Boersma and Pyenson (2015) made it the type species of the genus Albicetus.[13]
References
- ^ PaleoBiology Database: Ontocetus, basic info
- ^ Leidy J (1859). "[Remarks on Dromatherium sylvestre and Ontocetus emmonsi]". Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 1859: 162.
- ^ B. Du Bus. 1867. Sur quelques mammiferes du crag d'Anvers. Bulletins de L'Academie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts 24:562-577
- ^ P. J. Van Beneden. 1871. Les Phoques de la mer scaldisienne. Bulletins de L'Academie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres det des Beaux-Arts de Belgique 32:5-18
- S2CID 130245053.
- ^ .
- ^ E. L. Trouessart. 1898. Catalogus mammalium tam viventium quam fossilum 5:665-1264
- ^ G. Hasse. 1909. Les Morses Pliocène poederlien à Anvers. Bulletin de la Société Belge de Géologie de Paléontologie et d'Hydrologie (Bruxelles) 23:293-322
- ^ Rutten L (1907). "On fossil trichechids from Zeeland and Belgium". Proceedings of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. 10 (1): 2–14.
- .
- .
- ^ a b Kohno N., Ray C. E. (2008). "Pliocene walruses from the Yorktown Formation of Virginia and North Carolina, and a systematic revision of the North Atlantic Pliocene walruses". Virginia Museum of Natural History Special Publication. 14: 39–80.
- PMID 26651027.
- Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters by Donald R. Prothero and Carl Buell
- Marine Mammals: Evolutionary Biology by Annalisa Berta, James L. Sumich, and Kit M. Kovacs