Lomacetus
Lomacetus is an extinct genus of porpoise belonging to the family Phocoenidae. It is a significant find in the fossil record because it is the first known fossil of the subfamily Phocoeninae, which includes all living porpoises.
Ghedoghedo · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. 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- Sits inside
- PhocoenidaePBDB
- Diet
- piscivorePBDB, for Phocoenidae
- Life habit
- aquatic, depth=surfacePBDB, for Cetacea
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Cetacea
- Environment
- marine,freshwaterPBDB, for Odontoceti
Time the record covers
At most 4.4 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.63 Mya and 7.246 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Lomacetus on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
2 occurrences- Miocene100%
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
1 formation
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The named rock units Lomacetus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Lomacetus and its relatives
MioceneWhere Lomacetus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
45 taxa- Piscobalaena nana2 sites
- Acrophoca1 site
- Acrophoca longirostris1 site
- Alosidae1 site
- Archaebalaenoptera eusebioi1 site
- Ariidae1 site
- Australophoca changorum1 site
- Balaenoptera siberi1 site
- Balaenopteridae1 site
- Balaenopteroidea1 site
- Brachydelphis jahuayensis1 site
- Carcharodon hastalis1 site
- Carnivora1 site
- Cetotheriidae1 site
- Crocodylia1 site
- Eurhinodelphinidae1 site
- Incakujira anillodefuego1 site
- Isurus oxyrinchus1 site
- Koristocetus pescei1 site
- Megatheriidae1 site
- Miocaperea pulchra1 site
- Monachinae1 site
- Myliobatis1 site
- Nanosiren1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Lomacetus, 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
2 references- Did the giant extinct shark Carcharocles megalodon target small prey? Bite marks on marine mammal remains from the late Miocene of Peru1
- Un nouveau Phocoenidae (Odontoceti, Mammalia) du Miocene superieur de la Formation Pisco (Perou)1
Each of the 2 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. 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 content1
Picture of Lomacetus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Ghedoghedo
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Lomacetus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Lomacetus”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itPhocoenidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Muizon 1986