Waipatia
Waipatia is an extinct genus of odontocetes from the late Oligocene (Chattian) of New Zealand.

Mr Fink ( talk ) · 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
- WaipatiidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Odontoceti
- Life habit
- aquatic, depth=surfacePBDB, for Cetacea
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Cetacea
- Environment
- marine,freshwaterPBDB, for Odontoceti
Time the record covers
At most 8.7 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 33.9 Mya and 25.2 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Waipatia on record, most of them in the Oligocene. 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
3 occurrences- Oligocene100%
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
2 formations
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The named rock units Waipatia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Waipatia and its relatives
OligoceneWhere Waipatia and its relatives were recorded in the Oligocene.
Found in the same rock
11 taxa- Balanophyllia1 site
- Blanus1 site
- Coronodon havensteini1 site
- Crenatosiren olseni1 site
- Eomysticetidae1 site
- Kairuku1 site
- Otodus (Carcharocles) angustidens1 site
- Pelagornis1 site
- Spheniscidae1 site
- Turborotalia euapertura1 site
- Waharoa ruwhenua1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Waipatia, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
3 references- Paleontology of the “Ashley Phosphate Beds” of Charleston: Insights from Northbridge Park, Charleston, South Carolina1
- Fossil Pinnipedia and Cetacea1
- Waipatia maerewhenua, new genus and new species, Waipatiidae, new family, an archaic late Oligocene dolphin (Cetacea: Odontoceti: Platanistoidea) from New Zealand1
Each of the 3 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 content2
Picture of Waipatia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Mr Fink ( talk )
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows 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.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Waipatia”
- 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 itWaipatiidae through timeFormations of the OligoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Fordyce 1994