''Titanocetus'' ("

Titano Titano the Super-Ape () is a supervillain who appears in American comic books published by DC Comics, primarily as a foe of Superman. The character is a small chimpanzee named Toto who was sent into space for test flight, until an exposure of ...

whale") is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

of extinct

cetacea Cetacea (; , ) is an infraorder of aquatic mammals that includes whales, dolphins, and porpoises. Key characteristics are their fully aquatic lifestyle, streamlined body shape, often large size and exclusively carnivorous diet. They propel them ...

ns closely related to the family

Cetotheriidae Cetotheriidae is a family of baleen whales (parvorder Mysticeti). The family is known to have existed from the Late Oligocene to the Early Pleistocene before going extinct. Although some phylogenetic studies conducted by recovered the living py ...

Discovery

The fossil remains of ''Titanocetus'' were discovered within some marine deposits dating back to the

Serravallian The Serravallian is, in the geologic timescale, an List of time periods, age or a stage (stratigraphy), stage in the middle Miocene epoch (geology), Epoch/series (stratigraphy), Series, which spans the time between 13.82 annum, Ma and 11.63 Ma (m ...

(middle

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recen ...

) and belonging to the " Fumaiolo Formation" (

Republic of San Marino San Marino (, ), officially the Republic of San Marino ( it, Repubblica di San Marino; ), also known as the Most Serene Republic of San Marino ( it, Serenissima Repubblica di San Marino, links=no), is the fifth-smallest country in the world an ...

). The whale was then described in 1900 by the Italian

paleontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

Giovanni Capellini Giovanni Capellini (23 August 1833 – 28 May 1922) was an Italians, Italian geologist and paleontologist. He was a Senator of the Kingdom of Italy in the seventeenth legislature. Birth and education Giovanni Capellini was born on 23 August ...

, who later (1901) named it ''Aulocetus sammarinensis''. Over a century later, in 2006, the paleontologist Michelangelo Bisconti stated that the remains was too different from the

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen ...

of the genus '' Aulocetus'' and thus established a new genus, ''Titanocetus''.

Description

This whale was similar in appearance to the living

Balaenopteridae Rorquals () are the largest group of baleen whales, which comprise the family Balaenopteridae, containing ten extant species in three genera. They include the largest animal that has ever lived, the blue whale, which can reach , and the fin wha ...

, although it was considerably smaller in size: the

skull The skull is a bone protective cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of four types of bone i.e., cranial bones, facial bones, ear ossicles and hyoid bone. However two parts are more prominent: the cranium and the mandible. In humans, the ...

barely exceeded one meter in total length, while the entire animal reached around six meters. Considered nowadays to be a primitive member of the

Mysticeti Baleen whales (systematic name Mysticeti), also known as whalebone whales, are a parvorder of carnivorous marine mammals of the infraorder Cetacea (whales, dolphins and porpoises) which use keratinaceous baleen plates (or "whalebone") in their ...

, already equipped with

baleen Baleen is a filter-feeding system inside the mouths of baleen whales. To use baleen, the whale first opens its mouth underwater to take in water. The whale then pushes the water out, and animals such as krill are filtered by the baleen and ...

, ''Titanocetus'' was a carrier of both modern (i.e. the rostrum, wide and flat) and ancestral characters (i.e. the squamosal and

parietal bone The parietal bones () are two bones in the Human skull, skull which, when joined at a fibrous joint, form the sides and roof of the Human skull, cranium. In humans, each bone is roughly quadrilateral in form, and has two surfaces, four borders, an ...

s, which occupy part of the

temporal fenestra An infratemporal fenestra, also called the lateral temporal fenestra or simply temporal fenestra, is an opening in the skull behind the orbit in some animals. It is ventrally bordered by a zygomatic arch. An opening in front of the eye sockets, ...

References

Bibliography

*Capellini, G. 1900. "Balenottera miocenica della Repubblica di San Marino". ''Atti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei'' 5:233-235. *Capellini, G. 1901. "Balenottera miocenica del Monte Titano Repubblica di S. Marino". ''Memorie della Regia Accademia delle Scienze all'Istituto di Bologna'' 5:237-260. *Bisconti, M. 2006. "''Titanocetus'', a new baleen whale from the Middle Miocene of northern Italy (Mammalia, Cetacea, Mysticeti)". '' Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology'', 26(2):344-354. {{Taxonbar, from=Q15653244 Baleen whales Miocene cetaceans Prehistoric mammals of Europe Prehistoric monotypic mammal genera Fossil taxa described in 2006