Whales are first found in the fossil record approximately 52.5 million years ago (Mya) during
the early Eocene in Indo-Pakistan. Our knowledge of early and middle Eocene whales has …

The cetacean nose presents a unique suite of anatomical modifications. Key among these is
posterior movement of the external nares from the tip of the rostrum to the top of the head …

The remarkable fossil record of whales and dolphins (Cetacea) has made them an exemplar
of macroevolution. Although their overall adaptive transition from terrestrial to fully aquatic …

A cladistic analysis of 54 extant and extinct cetacean taxa scored for 304 morphological
characters supports a monophyletic Odontoceti, Mysticeti, Autoceta, and Cetacea. Forcing a …

Mammalodon colliveri is an unusual toothed archaic mysticete (Cetacea) from the Upper
Oligocene Jan Juc Formation of south-east Australia. The morphology of the holotype skull …

The three extant sperm whale species, the giant Physeter macrocephalus and the diminutive
Kogia species, are relict members of the superfamily Physeteroidea, whose evolutionary …

Although combined molecular and morphological analyses point to a late middle Eocene
(38–39 million years ago) origin for the clade Neoceti (Odontoceti, echolocating toothed …

The killer whale (Orcinus orca) and false killer whale (Pseudorca crassidens) are the only
extant cetaceans that hunt other marine mammals, with pods of the former routinely preying …

As the largest known vertebrates of all time, mysticetes depend on keratinous sieves called
baleen to capture enough small prey to sustain their enormous size [1]. The origins of …

Baleen whales (Mysticeti) are gigantic filter-feeding cetaceans possessing the unique soft
tissue structure baleen and lacking adult teeth; Oligocene fossils have revealed a wealth of …