Remains of a fossil cetacean, belonging to the family Basilosauridae, are for the first time found in the territory of the Baltic States. This finding is represented by a large vertebra and comes ...from the Late Eocene amber-bearing "Blue Ground" bed of the Sambia Peninsula in the Kaliningrad Region. The described fossil expands our knowledge on paleogeography and stratigraphic occurrence of Basilosauridae.
Passive acoustic monitoring is increasingly used by the scientific community to study, survey and census marine mammals, especially cetaceans, many of which are easier to hear than to see. PAM is ...also used to support efforts to mitigate potential negative effects of human activities such as ship traffic, military and civilian sonar and offshore exploration. Walter Zimmer provides an integrated approach to PAM, combining physical principles, discussion of technical tools and application-oriented concepts of operations. Additionally, relevant information and tools necessary to assess existing and future PAM systems are presented, with Matlab code used to generate figures and results so readers can reproduce data and modify code to analyse the impact of changes. This allows the principles to be studied whilst discovering potential difficulties and side effects. Aimed at graduate students and researchers, the book provides all information and tools necessary to gain a comprehensive understanding of this interdisciplinary subject.
So-called 'kentriodontids' are extinct dolphin-like odontocetes known from the Early to Late Miocene worldwide. Although recent studies have proposed that they were monophyletic, their taxonomic ...relationships still remain controversial. Such a controversy exists partly because of the predominance of primitive morphologies in this taxon, but the fact is that quite a few 'kentriodontids' are known only from fragmentary skulls and/or isolated periotics. A new 'kentriodontid' Platysvercus ugonis gen. et sp. nov. is described based on a nearly complete skull from the upper Lower Miocene Sugota Formation, Akita Prefecture, northern Japan. Based on the phylogenetic analysis of P. ugonis described here, the monophyly of the 'kentriodontids' is confirmed, and it is recognized as the superfamily Kentriodontoidea. This new superfamily is subdivided into two families as new ranks: Kentriodontidae and Lophocetidae. Based on the paleobiogeographic analysis of the Kentriodontoidea, their common ancestor emerged in the North Pacific Ocean and spread over the Northern Hemisphere. Initial diversification of the Kentriodontidae in the North Pacific Ocean and the Lophocetidae in the North Atlantic Ocean was recognized as a vicariance event. The diversification and extinction of the Kentriodontoidea could have been synchronously influenced by climate events during the Middle Miocene.
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