Titanocetus
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Titanocetus Temporal range: Serravallian |
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| Skull of Titanocetus sammarinensis (holotype) in Bologna. | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Artiodactyla |
| Infraorder: | Cetacea |
| Parvorder: | Mysticeti |
| Family: | Cetotheriidae (?) |
| Genus: |
†Titanocetus Bisconti 2006 |
| Species | |
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†T. sammarinensis Capellini 1901 |
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†T. sammarinensis Capellini 1901
Titanocetus ("Titano whale") is a genus of extinct cetaceans closely related to the family Cetotheriidae.
The fossil remains of Titanocetus was discovered within some marine deposits dating back to the Serravallian (middle Miocene) and belonging to the "Fumaiolo Formation" (Republic of San Marino). The whale was then described in 1900 by the Italian paleontologist Giovanni Capellini, 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 of the genus Aulocetus and thus established a new genus, Titanocetus.
This whale was similar in appearance to the living Balaenopteridae, although it was considerably smaller in size: the skull 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, already equipped with baleen, Titanocetus was a carrier of both modern (i.e. the rostrum, wide and flat) and ancestral characters (i.e. the squamosal and parietal bones, which occupy part of the temporal fenestra).
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