Fragilicetus
Fragilicetus is an extinct genus of rorqual from Early Pliocene deposits in Belgium.
No picture of Fragilicetus was found. Wikipedia, Wikidata and iDigBio were searched and had none. Smithsonian Open Access did not answer, so this is what the others held rather than everything there is. GBIF was asked, and what came back is not recorded: nothing, or a picture this site could not tie to Fragilicetus, or no answer at all. This entry cannot say which.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- BalaenopteridaePBDB
- Diet
- suspension feederPBDB, for Balaenopteridae
- Life habit
- aquaticPBDB, for Mysticeti
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Cetacea
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Mysticeti
Time the record covers
At most 21 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 23.04 Mya and 2.58 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
7 occurrences of Fragilicetus on record, most of them in the Pliocene. 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
7 occurrencesThese 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
2 formations
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The named rock units Fragilicetus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Fragilicetus and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Fragilicetus and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
60 taxa- Balaenopteridae2 sites
- Phocidae2 sites
- Alopias vulpinus1 site
- Antidorcas1 site
- Antilopini1 site
- Arctocephalus1 site
- Australithax1 site
- Balaenoptera1 site
- Balaenoptera musculus1 site
- Balistidae1 site
- Bathyergidae1 site
- Calonectris1 site
- Carcharias taurus1 site
- Carcharodon carcharias1 site
- Ceratotherium1 site
- Connochaetes1 site
- Dege hendeyi1 site
- Delphinidae1 site
- Diunatans1 site
- Diunatans luctoretemergo1 site
- Francolinus1 site
- Fulmarinae1 site
- Heyaenidae indet.1 site
- Hipparion1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Fragilicetus, 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
3 references- New cetacean fossils from the late Cenozoic of South Africa5
- Fossil cetaceans from Duinefontein (Koeberg) an early Pliocene site on the southwestern Cape, South Africa1
- Fragilicetus velponi: a new mysticete genus and species and its implications for the origin of Balaenopteridae (Mammalia, Cetacea, Mysticeti)1
Each of the 7 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content0
No picture of Fragilicetus was found. Wikipedia, Wikidata and iDigBio were searched and had none.
Smithsonian Open Access did not answer, so this is what the others held rather than everything there is.
GBIF was asked, and what came back is not recorded: nothing, or a picture this site could not tie to Fragilicetus, or no answer at all. This entry cannot say which.
No 3D scan of Fragilicetus was found in Sketchfab.
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 itBalaenopteridae through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Bisconti and Bosselaers 2016