Dear colleagues, We pleased to announce the following paper:
Pavel Gol’din, Dmitry Startsev, and Tatiana Krakhmalnaya. The anatomy of Cetotherium riabinini Hofstein, 1948, a baleen whale from the late Miocene of Ukraine. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica in press, available online 13 Mar 2013 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4202/app.2012.0107 Abstract We re-describe Cetotherium riabinini, a little known baleen whale from the Late Miocene of the Eastern Paratethys. C. riabinini is represented by an exceptionally well-preserved skull and partial skeleton, and is shown to be closely related to C. rathkii, the only other member of the genus. Cetotheriids from the Eastern Paratethys are remarkable for their pachyosteosclerotic postcranial skeleton, and are among the youngest known cetaceans displaying such an anatomy. C. riabinini is hypothesised to have followed a generalised feeding strategy combining herpetocetine-like continuous suction feeding, as seen in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos, and eschrichtiid-like intermittent suction feeding. This hypothesis may explain the mechanism and function of cranial kinesis in baleen whales. Many characteristics of the mysticete skull likely evolved as a result of cranial kinesis, thus leading to multiple instances of morphological convergence across several different phylogenetic lineages. The paper is available online at: http://www.app.pan.pl/article/item/app20120107.html You can contact me at: [email protected] Regards, Pavel Dr Pavel Gol'din Department of Zoology Taurida National University Simferopol, Ukraine _______________________________________________ MARMAM mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/marmam
