This has been a heck of a year for fossil baleen whales. New species are swimming out of the rock and into academic journals at a rapid pace, particularly those that may have played a critical role in the story of how mysticetes evolved to strain the seas. But not all the novel taxa are toothy wonders. From the coastal desert of Peru comes a new genus of baleen whale that belonged to a puzzling group.
Paleontologist Felix Marx and colleagues have named the Miocene whale Tiucetus rosae. So far, it's only known from a partial skull recovered from the 18-9 million year old deposits of Santa Rosa. But not only does the skull represent a species never before seen, but it adds context to a little-known group called cetotheriids.
For a long time, Marx and coauthors point out, cetothere was a wastebasket taxon. That is, it was a group that lots of species were assigned to but seemed to have no real identity in nature. Slowly, however, the wastebasket has been sorted out and cetotheriids - as they're not called - have turned out to be a diverse group of whales that had their heyday in the Miocene. Tiucetus was part of that, Marx and colleagues write, connecting the cetotheriids with a broader array of whales that includes today's pygmy right whale. Piece by piece, the ebb and flow of baleen whale history is coming into focus.
Name: Tiucetus rosae
Meaning: Tiucetus means "sand whale", for the desert along the Peru coastline where the fossils were found, and rosae is for Santa Rosa.
Age: Miocene, between 18 and 9 million years ago.
Where in the world?: Santa Rosa, Peru.
What sort of organism?: A baleen whale.
How much of the organism’s is known?: A partial skull
References:
Marx, F., Lambert, O., de Muizon, C. 2017. A new Miocene baleen whale from Peru deciphers the dawn of cetotheriids. Royal Society Open Science. doi: 10.1098/rsos.170560
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