Zygorhiza
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Zygorhiza Temporal range: Late Eocene |
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| Zygorhiza kochii skeleton, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Artiodactyla |
| Infraorder: | Cetacea |
| Family: | †Basilosauridae |
| Subfamily: | †Dorudontinae |
| Genus: |
†Zygorhiza True 1908 |
| Species: | †Z. kochii |
| Binomial name | |
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Zygorhiza kochii Kellogg 1936 |
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Zygorhiza ("Yoke-Root") is an extinct genus of basilosaurid early whale known from the Late Eocene (Priabonian, 38–34 Ma) of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, United States, and the Bortonian (43–37 Ma on the New Zealand geologic time scale) to the late Eocene of New Zealand (43 to 33.9 million years ago). Specimens reported from Europe are considered Dorudontinae incertae sedis.
Zygorhiza kochii is the state fossil of Mississippi. The mounted specimen in the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science in Jackson is commonly referred to as "Ziggy".
In the late 19th century there was a debate whether large and small specimens of Zeuglodon brachyspondylus (=Basilosaurus, but the species is now considered a nomen nudum) were separate species or not. Hoping to clarify things, Stromer 1903 proposed using Z. brachyspondylus exclusively for large fossils and created the subspecies Z. brachyspondylus minor for the small specimens which had previously been synonymized with Dorudon serratus.True 1908 proposed the genus Zygorhiza for the subspecies. Adopting True's generic name, Kellogg 1936 synonymized this subspecies with Basilosaurus kochii and Zeuglodon hydrachus (better known as "Dr Albert Koch's Hydrarchos", see Pontogeneus) and half a dozen other combinations and placed them in the species Zygorhiza kochii.
Seeley 1876 named and described the species Zeuglodon wanklyni based on a skull that is friend Dr. Arthur Wanklyn had found in the Barton Clays in southern England. This skull, however, was never deposited at the British Museum of Natural History and has not been since Seeley described it. Kellogg 1936, nevertheless, recombined it as Zygorhiza wanklyni and referred a posterior cervical vertebra from the same location to it. Uhen 1998 declared it nomen nudum.
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