Pelagiceti

Marine Mammal Commission · Public Domain · via Wikidata/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
- CetaceaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Cetacea
- Life habit
- aquatic, depth=surfacePBDB, for Cetacea
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Cetacea
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Cetacea
Time the record covers
At least 41 million years on record.
The record covers at least 41.03 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 66 Mya to 0 Mya.
5,384 occurrences of Pelagiceti on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
5,384 occurrencesThese 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
516 formations
- Calvert Formation · Chesapeake Group273
- Pisco Formation114
- Yorktown Formation · Chesapeake Group82
- Monterey Formation69
- Pietra Leccese Formation54
- Berchem Formation54
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The named rock units Pelagiceti has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 492 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 2,450 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Pelagiceti and its relatives
MioceneWhere Pelagiceti and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
1,900 taxa- Odontoceti42 sites
- Mysticeti25 sites
- Delphinidae18 sites
- Basilosaurus cetoides17 sites
- Carcharodon hastalis16 sites
- Cetotheriidae16 sites
- Myliobatis15 sites
- Otodus megalodon13 sites
- Squalodontidae13 sites
- Phocidae12 sites
- Physeteridae12 sites
- Kentriodontidae10 sites
- Ziphiidae10 sites
- Balaenidae9 sites
- Carcharhinus9 sites
- Cetacea9 sites
- Eurhinodelphinidae9 sites
- Sirenia9 sites
- Spheniscidae9 sites
- Balaenopteridae8 sites
- Basilosauridae8 sites
- Galeocerdo aduncus8 sites
- Monachinae8 sites
- Testudines8 sites
The Paleobiology Database records at least 1,000 sites for Pelagiceti, and this reads 240 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
1,549 references- Annotated Bibliography of Quaternary Vertebrates of Northern North America267
- A list of fossil cetaceans in Japan97
- USNM Chesapeake Group Cetacean Collection Data92
- Determining the ages of sub-fossil cetacean remains, found in the Carse of Stirling, Scotland87
- A review of the Tertiary fossil Cetacea (Mammalia) localities in Australia66
- Faune du Tertiare et du Pleistocene inferieur de Belgique (Oiseaux et mammiferes) Donnees paleontologiques63
- Late Pleistocene and Holocene whale remains (Cetacea) from Denmark and adjacent countries: Species, distribution, chronology, and trace element concentrations62
- Catalog of Living Whales60
- Neogene Cetacea of the Lee Creek Phosphate Mine, North Carolina49
- Miocene Toothed Whales (Odontoceti) from Calvert Cliffs, Atlantic Coastal Plain, USA45
- Preliminary estimates of the abundance of cetaceans along the U.S. west coast: 1991-200144
- Marine mammal strandings in the New Caledonia region, Southwest Pacific43
Each of the 5,384 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. 1,537 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 content1

Picture of Pelagiceti
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Marine Mammal Commission
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Pelagiceti 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itCetacea through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Uhen 2008