- Eobalaenoptera harrisoni
Taxobox
name = Harrison's Whale
fossil_range = middleMiocene
regnum =Animal ia
phylum = Chordata
classis =Mammal ia
subclassis =Eutheria
ordo =Cetacea
subordo =Mysticeti
familia = Not yet specified
genus = "Eobalaenoptera"
species = "E. harrisoni"
binomial = "Eobalaenoptera harrisoni"
binomial_authority = Dooley, Fraser & Luo, 2004"Eobalaenoptera harrisoni" is an extinct species of
baleen whale . The species was first described in June 2004 by researchers at theVirginia Museum of Natural History .The researchers identified the species from a partial skeleton found in 1990 in
Caroline County, Virginia , the site of a prehistoric ocean, in middleMiocene Calvert Formation rocks. The 11 m (35 ft) skeleton proved to have similar morphological characteristics to aclade ofwhale s consisting of two modern taxonomic families -Balaenopteridae (therorqual s), andEschrichtiidae (a family with one surviving species, theGray Whale ).The age of skeleton was estimated to be 14 million years, making the species the oldest known member of the clade by three to five million years. It also considerably narrowed the gap between the earliest known fossil record and estimated time of divergence of this clade from other baleen whales. Molecular studiesFact|date=August 2007 have put this divergence time at around 25 million years.
The genus name "Eobalaenoptera" reflects the similarities between this skeleton and species in the genus "Balaenoptera" such as the
Minke Whale ; "eo-" is a prefix meaning dawn. The species is named after Carter Harrison, a volunteer worker at the museum.References
*Alton. C. Dooley, Nicholas C. Fraser and Zhe-Xi Luo (2004). The Earliest Known Member of the Rorqual-Gray Whale Clade. "Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology" 24 (2): 453-463.
External links
* [http://www.wdcs.org Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS)]
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