Globicephala

via iDigBio · via iDigBio. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- pilot whalePBDB
- Sits inside
- GlobicephalinaePBDB
- Diet
- piscivore, carnivorePBDB, for Delphinidae
- Life habit
- aquatic, depth=surfacePBDB, for Cetacea
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Cetacea
- Environment
- marine,freshwaterPBDB, for Odontoceti
Time the record covers
At least 11 million years on record.
The record covers at least 11.63 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 0 Mya.
52 occurrences of Globicephala on record. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
52 occurrences- Miocene17%
- Pliocene16%
- Pleistocene13%
- Holocene54%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
6 formations
- Red Crag Formation2
- Yorktown Formation · Chesapeake Group2
- Salsomaggiore Formation1
- Numa Formation1
- Omma Formation1
- Goose Creek Formation1
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The named rock units Globicephala has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 44 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
585 taxa- Delphinidae7 sites
- Ziphiidae7 sites
- Cetacea6 sites
- Mesoplodon6 sites
- Mysticeti6 sites
- Physeter macrocephalus5 sites
- Balaenopteridae4 sites
- Delphinus4 sites
- Phocidae4 sites
- Balaena3 sites
- Balaenidae3 sites
- Balaenoptera physalus3 sites
- Delphinus delphis3 sites
- Equus3 sites
- Grampus griseus3 sites
- Hemisyntrachelus3 sites
- Ontocetus emmonsi3 sites
- Physeteridae3 sites
- Aluterus2 sites
- Balaenoptera musculus2 sites
- Carcharodon carcharias2 sites
- Chondrichthyes2 sites
- Delphinapterus2 sites
- Epinephelus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 51 sites for Globicephala, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
31 references- Foraging behaviour and ecology of transient killer whales (Orcinus orca)13
- Marine mammal strandings in the New Caledonia region, Southwest Pacific4
- Report on the bones of Cetacea4
- Determining the ages of sub-fossil cetacean remains, found in the Carse of Stirling, Scotland3
- Catalog of Living Whales2
- Fossil Pinnipedia and Cetacea1
- Ressources complémentaires et mobilité dans le Magdalénien cantabrique. Nouvelles données sur les mammifères marins, les crustacés, les mollusques et les roches organogènes de la Grotte de Las Caldas (Asturies, Espagne)1
- Neogene Cetacea of the Lee Creek Phosphate Mine, North Carolina1
- Weer een schedel van Protophocaena minima erbij!1
- Fossil cetaceans from the distribution area of the Omma Formation in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan1
- The first fossil record of a short-finned pilot whale (Globicephala macrorhynchus) from the Penghu Channel1
- Procedencia y datacion reliminar de un delfinido fosil del genero Globicephala1
Each of the 52 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 19 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2

Picture of Globicephala
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itGlobicephalinae through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lesson 1828