Pontobasileus

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Pontobasileus
Temporal range: Eocene
Scientific classification Red Pencil Icon.png
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Infraorder: Cetacea
Family: Protocetidae
Subfamily: Georgiacetinae
Genus: Pontobasileus
Leidy, 1873
Species:
P. tuberculatus
Binomial name
Pontobasileus tuberculatus
Leidy, 1873

Pontobasileus is an archaeocete whale known from a fragment of a single tooth described by Leidy 1873. [1] [2] It can questionably be dated to the Eocene of Alabama. [3]

Leidy assigned the tooth to Archaeoceti, but without neither a stratigraphic nor a geographic locality it is virtually impossible to argue for or against this classification. The tooth was later classified as an Archaeoceti incertae sedis [4] and even a squalodont odontocete (a more recent whale), but can also be assigned to Protocetidae. [5]

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References

Notes
  1. Leidy 1873 , Plate XXXVII, Fig. 15
  2. "†Pontobasileus Leidy 1873 (whale)". Fossilworks. Retrieved 17 December 2021.
  3. Gillette 1975 , p. 65
  4. Kellogg 1936 , pp. 264–265
  5. Hulbert Jr et al. 1998 , p. 918
Sources