Dorudon

Dorudon ("spear-tooth") is a genus of extinct basilosaurid ancient whales that lived alongside Basilosaurus 41.03 to 33.9 million years ago in the Eocene. It was a small whale, with D. atrox measuring 5 metres (16 ft) long and weighing 1–2.2 metric tons. Dorudon lived in warm seas around the world and fed on small fish and mollusks. Fossils have been found along the former shorelines of the Tethys Sea in present-day Egypt and Pakistan, as well as in the United States, New Zealand and Western Sahara.

Dorudon

EvaK · CC BY-SA 2.5 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
BasilosauridaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB
Life habit
aquaticPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB
Environment
marinePBDB

Time the record covers

At most 7.2 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 41.03 Mya and 33.9 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Eocene — about 61 of 61 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 61 occurrences41–41 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences41–41 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences41–40 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences40–40 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences40–40 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences40–40 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences40–39 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences39–39 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences39–39 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences39–39 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences39–38 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences38–38 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences38–38 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences38–37 Mya — about 4 occurrences37–37 Mya — about 4 occurrences37–37 Mya — about 4 occurrences37–37 Mya — about 4 occurrences37–36 Mya — about 4 occurrences36–36 Mya — about 4 occurrences36–36 Mya — about 4 occurrences36–36 Mya — about 4 occurrences36–35 Mya — about 4 occurrences35–35 Mya — about 4 occurrences35–35 Mya — about 4 occurrences35–34 Mya — about 4 occurrences34–34 Mya — about 4 occurrences34–34 Mya — about 4 occurrences34–34 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences41.5 Mya33.4 Mya

61 occurrences of Dorudon on record, most of them in the Eocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

61 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

12 formations

Birket Qarun — 29.28°N, 30.04°EBirket Qarun — 29.48°N, 30.63°EBirket Qarun — 29.53°N, 30.72°EBirket Qarun — 29.54°N, 30.40°EBirket Qarun — 29.27°N, 30.20°EBirket Qarun — 29.32°N, 30.05°EGehannam — 29.30°N, 30.05°EGehannam — 29.31°N, 30.06°EGehannam — 29.36°N, 30.16°ESamlat — 23.36°N, 16.03°WSamlat — 23.00°N, 16.06°WSamlat — 23.30°N, 16.06°WMoncks Corner Greensand — 33.45°N, 80.13°WMoodys Branch — 32.72°N, 90.46°WWaihao Greensand — 44.78°S, 171.17°EClinchfield — 32.91°N, 83.36°WQasr el-Sagha — 29.57°N, 30.57°EDaba'a — 29.16°N, 27.43°ETwiggs — 32.70°N, 83.63°WOcala — 31.90°N, 83.92°WWadi Esh-Shallala — 31.57°N, 37.12°E

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Dorudon has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 7 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Dorudon and its relatives

Eocene

Where Dorudon and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

250 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 58 sites for Dorudon, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

18 references

Each of the 61 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 6 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content2

Picture of Dorudon

Credit
EvaK
Licence
CC BY-SA 2.5
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC Attribution
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itBasilosauridae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gibbes 1845