Basilosaurus
| Basilosaurus | ||||||||||||
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Skeletal reconstruction of Basilosaurus |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Eocene | ||||||||||||
| 41 to 35 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Basilosaurus | ||||||||||||
| Harlan , 1834 | ||||||||||||
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Basilosaurus ("king lizard " from ancient Greek βασιλεύς, gen. Βασιλέως basileús, basiléōs = "king"; σαῦρος sauros = " lizard ") is an extinct whale genus of the Basilosauridae family.
description
The animals lived about 41 to 35 million years ago in the late Eocene and were snake-like in shape. They had a fluke like today's whales, and external hind limbs, which, however, like the Dorudontidae, were very small and at best could have been useful in mating, as some scientists now suspect, since no other meaning is ascribed to these rudimentary hind limbs knew. Basilosaurus was the largest mammal of its time and reached a length of about 18 m. The head measured about 1.5 m, a large part of the total length was formed by the long tail.
Today it is assumed that Basilosaurus, similar to today's killer whales or the Mesozoic marine reptiles such as the Mosasaurus, led a predatory existence and fed on fish and smaller marine mammals. This could be demonstrated , among other things, on stomach remains from the fossil area of Wadi al-Hitan in Egypt and the Yazoo formation in the US state of Mississippi , according to which Basilosaurus preyed on smaller whales like Dorudon , but also bony fish and sharks. The size of the prey ranged from 0.5 to 2 m in length. Basilosaurus is therefore regarded as the top predator of its time. In contrast to modern whales, he always had to stick his head out of the water to breathe because he had no blowhole .
Naming
Upon discovering the fossils, the researchers thought they had found dinosaur bones and gave the animals a scientific name typical of dinosaurs. When the fossils were later found to belong to mammals , Sir Richard Owen suggested the more appropriate name Zeuglodon . According to scientific nomenclature, however, the name given first is always the authoritative one, although the second name Zeuglodon ("yoke tooth" because of the teeth with double roots, typical for marine mammals) is still quite common. Other fossils of the same genus were assigned the name Zeuglodon , which however could clearly be assigned to the previously discovered group Basilosaurus and made the name Zeuglodon obsolete. Species in this genus were Basilosaurus cetoides (the largest) and Basilosaurus isis (Egypt), of which numerous fossils have been found in the Wadi al-Hitan, Valley of the Whales. Named after a single lumbar vertebra from Bari Nadi in Pakistan , Basilosaurus drazindai was moved to the genus Eocetus in 2015 .
In 1845, the German collector Albert Koch exhibited a 35-meter-long skeleton of a supposed sea serpent , which he called the Hydrarchos , first in New York City and then worldwide . He claimed to have found the skeleton in Clarksville , Alabama and that it represented the remains in the natural order he found them. But later Albert Koch was exposed as a con man when it turned out that the skeleton was composed of parts from at least five different Basilosaurus specimens. It was eventually destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire .
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Camm C. Swift and Lawrence G. Barnes, Stomach Contents of Basilosaurus Cetoides: Implications for the Evolution of Cetacean Feeding Behavior, and Evidence for Vertebrate Fauna of Epicontinental Eocene Seas. The Paleontological Society Special Publications 8 (Sixth North American Paleontological Convention Abstracts of Papers), 1996, p. 380
- ↑ Manja Voss, Mohammed Sameh M. Antar, Iyad S. Zalmout and Philip D. Gingerich: Stomach contents of the archaeocete Basilosaurus isis: Apex predator in oceans of the late Eocene. PLoS ONE 14 (1), 2019, p. E0209021 doi: 10.1371 / journal. pone.0209021
- ↑ Philip D. Gingerich, Muhammad Mashhood Arif and M. Akram Bhatti: Basilosaurus drazindai and Basiloterus hussaini, New Archaeoceti (Mammalia, Cetacea) from the Middle Eocene Drazinda Formation, with a Revised Interpretation of Ages of Whale-Bearing Strata in the Kirthar Group of the Sulaiman Range, Punjab (Pakistan). Contributions from the Museum of Paleontology, The University of Michigan 30 (2), 1997, pp. 55-81
- ^ Philip D. Gingerich and Samir Zouhri: New fauna of archaeocete whales (Mammalia, Cetacea) from the Bartonian middle Eocene of southern Morocco. Journal of African Earth Sciences 111, 2015, pp. 273-286
- ↑ Richard Ellis: Sea Monsters - Myths, Fables and Facts. Birkhäuser Verlag AG, Basel 1997, ISBN 3-7643-5422-4 .