Beneziphius

Beneziphius is an extinct genus of ziphiid cetacean known from late Miocene to Pliocene marine deposits in Belgium and fishing grounds off Spain. The genus name honors Pierre-Joseph van Beneden, who pioneered the study of Neogene marine mammals from Belgium.

Beneziphius
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Infraorder: Cetacea
Family: Ziphiidae
Genus: †Beneziphius
Lambert, 2005
Species
  • B. brevirostris Lambert, 2005 (type)
  • B. cetariensis Mijan et al., 2017

Taxonomy

Two species are known, B. brevirostris and B. cetariensis. Beneziphius differs from other primitive beaked whales ("Messapicetus clade" sensu Bianucci et al. 2016) in having ankylosed thickened premaxillae dorsally roofing the mesorostral groove for most of its length.[1][2] The two species of Beneziphius differ from each other in their size, rostral length, premaxillary length, and features of the premaxillary sac fossa.[3]

References
  1. Lambert, O. 2005. Systematics and phylogeny of the fossil beaked whales Ziphirostrum du Bus, 1868 and Choneziphius Duvernoy, 1851 (Cetacea, Odontoceti), from the Neogene of Antwerp (North of Belgium). Geodiversitas 27: 443–497.
  2. Bianucci, G., Di Celma, C., Urbina, M., and Lambert, O. 2016. New beaked whales from the late Miocene of Peru and evidence for convergent evolution in stem and crown Ziphiidae (Cetacea, Odontoceti). PeerJ 4: e2479.
  3. Miján, I., Louwye, S., and Lambert, O. 2017. A new Beneziphius beaked whale from the ocean floor off Galicia, Spain and biostratigraphic reassessment of the type species. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 62 (1): 211–220.
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