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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 ...
Genera from the Oligocene and Miocene had teeth in their upper jaws. These anatomical differences suggest that these ancient species may not have necessarily been deep-sea squid hunters like the modern sperm whale, but that some genera mainly ate fish. [27] [58] Contrary to modern sperm whales, most ancient sperm whales were built to hunt whales.
These whales are characterized by both ancestral and modern features. Their teeth are the most evident ancestral feature. At this time in history other toothed whales were evolving simple conical teeth while Squalodontidae retained their primitive dentition that their ancestors (the archaeocetes) had developed. [5]
The upper teeth all looked the same (monodonty), whereas the bottom teeth varied in shape (polydonty) which is an ancient characteristic of whales. There were three lower incisor teeth, and one upper incisor with possibly two or three vestigial incisors. The teeth were likely never replaced, and the whale had the same set of teeth throughout ...
Researchers crawled in the dark on hands and knees to find the creature’s teeth, officials said. Teeth embedded in cave walls reveal new species of ancient sea creature in Kentucky Skip to main ...
Romaleodelphis was a medium sized toothed whale with long and slender jaws that make up about 71% of the total skull length. The animal was homodont, meaning that like most modern toothed whales and unlike several now extinct forms that coexisted with Romaleodelphis it possessed only a single type of tooth in its jaws.
In the seas millions of years ago, whales were regularly hunted.Megalodons, bus-sized sharks, are believed to have been dominant ocean predators some 20 to 3.6 million years ago. The now extinct ...
As archaeocetes, Basilosaurids lacked the telescoping skull of present whales. Their jaws were powerful, [9] with a dentition easily distinguishable from that of other archaeocetes: they lack upper third molars and the upper molars lack protocones, trigon basins, and lingual third roots. The cheek teeth have well-developed accessory denticles.