Marx Felix G, Park Travis, Fitzgerald Erich M G, Evans Alistair R
Directorate of Earth and History of Life, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, Belgium.
School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia.
PeerJ. 2018 Jun 22;6:e5025. doi: 10.7717/peerj.5025. eCollection 2018.
Neobalaenines are an enigmatic group of baleen whales represented today by a single living species: the pygmy right whale, , found only in the Southern Hemisphere. Molecular divergence estimates date the origin of pygmy right whales to 22-26 Ma, yet so far there are only three confirmed fossil occurrences. Here, we describe an isolated periotic from the latest Miocene of Victoria (Australia). The new fossil shows all the hallmarks of , making it the second-oldest described neobalaenine, and the oldest record of the genus. Overall, the new specimen resembles in its external morphology and details of the cochlea, but is more archaic in it having a hypertrophied suprameatal area and a greater number of cochlear turns. The presence of in Australian waters during the Late Miocene matches the distribution of the living species, and supports a southern origin for pygmy right whales.
新须鲸类是一类神秘的须鲸，如今仅存一个现存物种：侏儒露脊鲸，仅在南半球被发现。分子分歧估计将侏儒露脊鲸的起源追溯到2200万至2600万年前，但迄今为止仅有三个经确认的化石记录。在此，我们描述了一个来自澳大利亚维多利亚州最新中新世的孤立围耳骨。这块新化石展现了新须鲸类的所有特征，使其成为已描述的第二古老的新须鲸类，也是该属的最古老记录。总体而言，新标本在其外部形态和耳蜗细节上与[此处原文缺失相关物种名]相似，但在具有肥厚的颞上区和更多的耳蜗螺旋方面更为古老。中新世晚期澳大利亚海域存在[此处原文缺失相关物种名]与现存物种的分布相符，并支持侏儒露脊鲸起源于南方的观点。
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