Albicetus

Albicetus oxymycterus
Temporal range: Langhian
↓
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Infraorder: Cetacea
Superfamily: Physeteroidea
Genus: †Albicetus
Boersma & Pyenson, 2015
Species: †A. oxymycterus
Binomial name
Albicetus oxymycterus
(Kellogg, 1925)

Albicetus is a genus of stem-sperm whales that lived around 15 million years ago, found in Santa Barbara, California in 1909. It was originally wrongly categorized for decades as belonging to a group of extinct walruses. It was named Albicetus, meaning "white whale," a reference to the leviathan in Herman Melville's classic 1851 novel Moby Dick, centering on Captain Ahab's obsession with a huge white sperm whale.[1][2]

Taxonomic history

It was originally classified as a species of the extinct walrus Ontocetus in 1925. At the time, the whereabouts of the holotype of Ontocetus emmonsi were considered unknown, even though Remington Kellogg considered it a member of Physeteridae.[3] This assignment was followed by later authors, including Barnes (1977) and Hay (1930).[4][5]

In 1994, the holotype of Ontocetus emmonsi was relocated in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, and in 2008 a comprehensive paper was published demonstrating that the Ontocetus generitype was a walrus, not a sperm whale. Hence, Ontocetus oxymycterus, which was not a walrus, was reassigned to Scaldicetus because of its enameled teeth.[6] However, Scaldicetus, being based on teeth, was hardly diagnostic at the genus or even familial level, and so in 2015 the new generic name Albicetus was coined for O. oxymycterus.

References

  1. ↑ http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-10/scientists-find-the-real-great-white-whale/7015864
  2. ↑ Alexandra T. Boersma & Nicholas D. Pyenson (2015). "Albicetus oxymycterus, a new generic name and redescription of a basal physeteroid (Mammalia, Cetacea) from the Miocene of California, and the evolution of body size in sperm whales". PLOS ONE. 10 (12): e0135551. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0135551.
  3. ↑ R. Kellogg. 1925. A fossil physeteroid cetacean from Santa Barbara County California. Proceedings of the United States National Museum 66(27):1-8
  4. ↑ O. P. Hay. 1930. Second Bibliography and Catalogue of the Fossil Vertebrata of North America. Carnegie Institution of Washington 390(II):1-1074
  5. ↑ L. G. Barnes. 1977. Outline of eastern North Pacific fossil cetacean assemblages. Systematic Zoology 25(4):321-343.
  6. ↑ N. Kohno and C. E. Ray. 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

External links


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