Neobalaenidae is a

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

of baleen whales (suborder Mysticeti) including the extant pygmy right whale. Although traditionally considered related to balaenids, a recent

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...

study by Fordyce and Marx (2013) recovered the living

pygmy right whale The pygmy right whale (''Caperea marginata'') is a species of baleen whale. It may be a member of the cetotheres, a family of baleen whales which until 2012 were thought to be extinct; ''C. marginata'' has otherwise been considered the monotyp ...

as a member of Cetotheriidae, making it the only extant cetotheriid, but not all authors agree with this argument.

Taxonomy

The family Neobalaenidae was long restricted to the pygmy right whale from the Southern Hemisphere due to the unusual skeletal form of the species relative to other extant mysticetes. Until the early 2010s Neobalaenidae was unknown from the fossil record despite a study by Sasaki et al. (2005) placing the divergence date of Neobalaenidae from other living baleen whales at 23 mya. Fordyce and Marx found that the pygmy right whale formed a well-supported clade with Eschrichtiidae and Balaenopteridae based on molecular data, and that, within 'cetotheres', it was most closely related to the herpetocetines ('' Herpetocetus'' and '' Nannocetus''), rendering the pygmy right whale the only living species of Cetotheriidae. Around the same time, Bisconti had described the first pygmy right whale from the fossil record, ''

Miocaperea ''Miocaperea'' is an extinct genus of pygmy right whale from the Late Miocene Pisco Formation of Peru.

'', from the

Pisco Formation The Pisco Formation is a geologic formation located in Peru, on the southern coastal desert of Ica and Arequipa. The approximately thick formation was deposited in the Pisco Basin, spanning an age from the Middle Miocene up to the Early Pleisto ...

of Peru. Bisconti, however, found, based on morphological data, it to be more closely related to Balaenidae (the bowhead and right whales), but added that additional specimens are expected to resolve these conflicting results within a few years. Cladistic analyses by Gol'din and Steeman partly agreed with Fordyce and Marx in recovering neobalaenids as closer to cetotheres than to Balaenidae, but disagreed with their recovery of the pygmy right whale as a herpetocetine, instead recovering Neobalaenidae outside Cetotheriidae.

Fossil record

Examples of Neobalaenidae in the fossil record include ''Miocaperea'', a couple of indeterminate earbones from Australia (one similar to ''Caperea''), and specimens from Pleistocene localities in the Northern Hemisphere.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q9049302 Baleen whales Mammal families Extant Tortonian first appearances