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Squaloziphius

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Squaloziphius
Temporal range: Early Miocene, 23–20 Ma
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Infraorder: Cetacea
Family: Squaloziphiidae
Genus: Squaloziphius
Muizon, 1991
Species:
S. emlongi
Binomial name
Squaloziphius emlongi
Muizon, 1991

Squaloziphius is an extinct genus of odontocete cetacean from the Early Miocene (Aquitanian) aged marine deposits in Washington state.

Systematics

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It was originally classified as the most primitive beaked whale, being placed in a separate subfamily, Squaloziphiinae,[1] (followed by Fordyce and Muizon 2001[2]) but later authors have placed it outside Ziphiidae as either Odontoceti incertae sedis or closely related to Ziphiidae.[3][4] The description of the archaic odontocete Yaquinacetus demonstrated that Squaloziphius was by no means part of Ziphiidae and that these two taxa are more primitive than crown Odontoceti, necessitating elevation of Squaloziphiinae to full familial status, as Squaloziphiidae.[5]

References

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  1. ^ C. Muizon. 1991. A new Ziphiidae (Cetacea) from the Early Miocene of Washington State (USA) and phylogenetic analysis of the major groups of odontocetes. Bulletin du Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle. 4e Serie. Section C. Sciences de la Terre. Paleontologie, Geologie, Mineralogie 12(3-4):279-326.
  2. ^ R. E. Fordyce and C. de Muizon. 2001. Evolutionary history of the cetaceans: a review. Secondary Adaptations of Tetrapods to Life in the Water 169-233.
  3. ^ O. Lambert. 2005. Systematics and phylogeny of the fossil beaked whales Ziphirostrum du Bus, 1868 and Choneziphius Duvernoy, 1851 (Mammalia, Cetacea, Odontoceti), from the Neogene of Antwerp (North of Belgium). Geodiversitas 27(3):443-497.
  4. ^ J. H. Geisler, M. R. McGowen, G. Yang and J. Gatesy. 2011. A supermatrix analysis of genomic, morphological, and paleontological data from crown Cetacea. BMC Evolutionary Biology 11(112):1-33.
  5. ^ Olivier Lambert, Stephen J. Godfrey & Erich M. G. Fitzgerald (2018) Yaquinacetus meadi, a new latest Oligocene–early Miocene dolphin (Cetacea, Odontoceti, Squaloziphiidae, fam. nov.) from the Nye Mudstone (Oregon, U.S.A.), Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 38:6, DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2018.1559174