Whale Petrosal Confirmation, please?

[AshHendrick]

Another find this weekend, actually Rick found it but let me bring it home, want to confirm that it's a petrosal and also what species based on my research I believe it to be. 

 

Found: Greensmill Run, Greenville NC among a huge array of items (whale bone including several tempanic bulla, shark teeth (great white, tiger,crow, Giant White Shark etc) and two Enchodus teeth etc. 

 

Believed to be a Petrosal from Balaenoptera Sursiplana? I thought (from one specific article/image reference below) that is was possibly Plesiobalaenoptera but it noted they are only found in Italy and the long flat part seemed much thicker than the reference image, but the rest seemed better matched than from the other species noted above?

 

[Fossildude19]

@Boesse

[Boesse]

Nice specimen! This is almost certainly Balaenula sp., a dwarf right whale known from the Yorktown Fm. at Lee Creek. It's a miniature version of Eubalaena in that image at the top (which is from my blog).

[AshHendrick]

Thanks Boesse!!! I didn't even think I would have referenced a members blog that would reply, it's a really informative post and def helped me get really close not knowing much of anything myself about bone ID!!  Now I can label and bestle it in my collection. Your blog also made me realize I threw off some things to the side that I thought where just random bone chunks that couldn't be identified so now I will be even more excited while I'm digging when I come across one again! 

[DD1991]

The drawing of the balaenopterid periotic labeled as Balaenoptera sursiplana is found in Kellogg (1969). The specimen in this drawing has the catalog number AMNH 1750, and it is unclear whether it could represent one of described fossil rorqual genera (Archaebalaenoptera, Protororqualus, Plesiobalaenoptera) because Bisconti and Bosselaers (2020) have referred two bullae of a rorqual from the Yorktown Formation to their new taxon Protororqualus wilfriedneesi, and B. sursiplana is based on a tympanic bulla of insufficient diagnostic value.

 

Bisconti, M., and Bosselaers, M., 2020. A new balaenopterid species from the Southern North Sea Basin informs about phylogeny and taxonomy of Burtinopsis and Protororqualus (Cetacea, Mysticeti, Balaenopteridae). PeerJ. 8: e9570. doi:10.7717/peerj.9570.

 

R. Kellogg. 1968. Miocene Calvert mysticetes described by Cope. Bulletin of the United States National Museum 247 (5):103-132.

[Shellseeker]

On 8/12/2020 at 12:26 PM, DD1991 said:

The drawing of the balaenopterid periotic labeled as Balaenoptera sursiplana is found in Kellogg (1969). The specimen in this drawing has the catalog number AMNH 1750, and it is unclear whether it could represent one of described fossil rorqual genera (Archaebalaenoptera, Protororqualus, Plesiobalaenoptera) because Bisconti and Bosselaers (2020) have referred two bullae of a rorqual from the Yorktown Formation to their new taxon Protororqualus wilfriedneesi, and B. sursiplana is based on a tympanic bulla of insufficient diagnostic value.

 

Bisconti, M., and Bosselaers, M., 2020. A new balaenopterid species from the Southern North Sea Basin informs about phylogeny and taxonomy of Burtinopsis and Protororqualus (Cetacea, Mysticeti, Balaenopteridae). PeerJ. 8: e9570. doi:10.7717/peerj.9570.

 

R. Kellogg. 1968. Miocene Calvert mysticetes described by Cope. Bulletin of the United States National Museum 247 (5):103-132.

 

I find this amazing.  I was hunting on the day you wrote this comment,  August 12th and I found this rock or fossil. It took me until yesterday to determine it was associated with a Baleen Whale ear bone: It was found in the Peace River Fm,  SW Florida.

How can the drawing so closely resemble the fossil I found 3 weeks ago?

 

 

[Boesse]

Nice find! Those posterior processes are, at first glance, sort of nondescript - but once you see one attached to the other part of the petrosal, they start popping up all over. They grow in length (and sometimes in thickness) through time, so there's quite a bit of variability even within a species, and lots of overlap within genera and even families.

[Shellseeker]

31 minutes ago, Boesse said:

Nice find! Those posterior processes are, at first glance, sort of nondescript - but once you see one attached to the other part of the petrosal, they start popping up all over. They grow in length (and sometimes in thickness) through time, so there's quite a bit of variability even within a species, and lots of overlap within genera and even families.

Thank you,  it has been a very exciting find...

For 10 days, I could not clearly determine whether it was rock or fossil.. It is hard fossilized. The indentations kept me going.

 

I am stunned and trying not to get to bad conclusions from what I am seeing on the Internet and in scientific papers.

Evidently this was found in the Calvert Cliffs, Maryland and written up by Cope (along with drawing in the 1890s and named B. sursiplana. He thought it was more likely from the Rorquals, than a right whale.  To me the few examples of the right whales, although quite a bit fatter, are closest in comparison and you can see, my find, is as close to Cope's drawing as anything else on the internet.

From the little info available, I am thinking mine is from (ancestor) of a pygmy Right whale and very few existed, but at least one in Maryland, and another in Florida's Peace River formation..

Is that WAY off base.....?

 

But, it is sort of immaterial, I am very pleased with this find and the insights I have picked up trying to figure out what it is.  Thanks for the insights contained in this sentence. Jack

43 minutes ago, Boesse said:

They grow in length (and sometimes in thickness) through time, so there's quite a bit of variability even within a species, and lots of overlap within genera and even families.