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It was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site [2] in July 2005 [3] for its hundreds of fossils of some of the earliest forms of whale, the archaeoceti (a now extinct sub-order of whales). The site reveals evidence for the explanation of one of the greatest mysteries of the evolution of whales : the emergence of the whale as an ocean-going ...
Fossils were later found of the second species, B. isis, in 1904 in Egypt, Western Sahara, Morocco, Jordan, Tunisia, and Pakistan. [3] Fossils have also been unearthed in the southeastern United States and Peru. [4] [5] [6] Basilosaurus is thought to have been common in the Tethys Ocean. [7] [8] It was one of the largest animals of the Paleogene.
Archaeoceti ("ancient whales"), or Zeuglodontes in older literature, is a paraphyletic group of primitive cetaceans that lived from the Early Eocene to the late Oligocene 1] Representing the earliest cetacean radiation , they include the initial amphibious stages in cetacean evolution , thus are the ancestors of both modern cetacean suborders ...
Rorquals are the largest group of baleen whales, with eleven species in three genera. They include the largest animal that has ever lived, the blue whale . They take their name from a Norwegian word meaning "furrow whale"; all members of the family have a series of longitudinal folds of skin running from below the mouth back to the navel ...
Perucetus is the largest Eocene whale measuring about 17–20 meters (56–66 ft) long. Some researchers claim that it may have rivaled or exceeded the modern blue whale in weight, partly due to the incredibly thick and dense bones this animal possessed, coupled with its already great size, while others argue that it was much lighter. [ 2 ]
They calculated that the ancient giant weighed somewhere between 94 and 375 tons (85 and 340 metric tons). The biggest blue whales found have been within that range — at around 200 tons (180 ...
The cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) are descendants of land-living mammals, the even-toed ungulates. The earliest cetaceans were still hoofed mammals. These early cetaceans became gradually better adapted for swimming than for walking on land, finally evolving into fully marine cetaceans.
Livyatan is the largest fossil sperm whale discovered, and was also one of the biggest-known predators, having the largest bite of any tetrapod. [ 1 ] [ 8 ] Diagram comparing the upper and lower size estimates of Livyatan (bottom three) with the size of mature sperm whales, including one of the largest individuals recorded (top three), and a human