Titanocetus Temporal range:
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Skull of Titanocetus sammarinensis ( holotype) in Bologna, Italy | |
Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Mammalia |
Order: | Artiodactyla |
Infraorder: | Cetacea |
Parvorder: | Mysticeti |
Family: | Cetotheriidae (?) |
Genus: | †
Titanocetus ( Bisconti 2006) |
Species [1] | |
†T. sammarinensis Capellini 1901 |
Titanocetus (" Titano whale") is a genus of extinct cetaceans closely related to the family Cetotheriidae. [1]
The fossil remains of Titanocetus were 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.
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 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).