Pygmy right whale fossils in the Northern Hemisphere

[DD1991]

A new cetacean-related paper is available online: 

 

Tsai et. al., 2017. Northern pygmy right whales highlight Quaternary marine mammal exchange. Current Biology 27 (19):R1058-R1059.  (link at http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)31096-5) 

 

The discovery of neobalaenid fossils from marine deposits in Japan and Italy not only fills a small gap between Miocaperea and the extant pygmy right whale, it also shows that pygmy right whales were widespread in all oceans and seas in pre-Holocene times, suggesting that a number of fragmentary taxa formerly classified in Cetotheriidae from the North Sea basin might be related to the pygmy right whale.