Ad
related to: whale evolution diagram
Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Species of the infraorder Cetacea A phylogenetic tree showing the relationships among cetacean families. [1]The evolution of cetaceans is thought to have begun in the Indian subcontinent from even-toed ungulates (Artiodactyla) 50 million years ago (mya) and to have proceeded over a period of at least 15 million years. [2]
Whales are fully aquatic, open-ocean animals: they can feed, mate, give birth, suckle and raise their young at sea. Whales range in size from the 2.6 metres (8.5 ft) and 135 kilograms (298 lb) dwarf sperm whale to the 29.9 metres (98 ft) and 190 tonnes (210 short tons) blue whale, which is the
Kutchicetus is an extinct genus of early whale of the family ... This mode of locomotion represents a transitional stage in whale evolution. [6] [7] See also ...
In some whales, however, it is less than half that of humans: 0.9% versus 2.1%. [citation needed] In cetaceans, evolution in the water has caused changes to the head that have modified brain shape such that the brain folds around the insula and expands more laterally than in terrestrial mammals.
Unlike toothed whales, baleen whales do not have wax ester deposits nor branched fatty chain acids in their blubber. Thus, more recent evolution of these complex blubber traits occurred after baleen whales and toothed whales split, and only in the toothed whale lineage. [10] [11] [12]
Basilosaurus (meaning "king lizard") is a genus of large, predatory, prehistoric archaeocete whale from the late Eocene, approximately 41.3 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). First described in 1834, it was the first archaeocete and prehistoric whale known to science. [2] Fossils attributed to the type species B. cetoides were discovered in the ...
The family Balaenidae, the right whales, contains two genera and four species. All right whales have no ventral grooves; a distinctive head shape with a strongly arched, narrow rostrum, bowed lower jaw; lower lips that enfold the sides and front of the rostrum; and long, narrow, elastic baleen plates (up to nine times longer than wide) with fine baleen fringes.
Skull of a cross between a narwhal and a beluga whale, at the Zoological Museum, Copenhagen. The beluga was first described in 1776 by Peter Simon Pallas. [1] It is a member of the family Monodontidae, which is in turn part of the parvorder Odontoceti (toothed whales). [1]