Izikoziphius
Izikoziphius is an extinct genus of beaked whale. It contains two species: Izikoziphius rossi, and Izikoziphius angustus.

Giovanni Bianucci, Olivier Lambert, and Klaas Post · CC0 · 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
- ZiphiinaePBDB
- Diet
- piscivore, carnivorePBDB, for Ziphiidae
- Life habit
- aquatic, depth=surfacePBDB, for Cetacea
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Cetacea
- Environment
- marine,freshwaterPBDB, for Odontoceti
Time the record covers
At least 2.7 million years on record.
The record covers at least 5.333 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 15.98 Mya to 0 Mya.
5 occurrences of Izikoziphius on record. 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
5 occurrences- Miocene47%
- Pliocene29%
- Pleistocene24%
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
1 formation
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Izikoziphius has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
79 taxa- Africanacetus ceratopsis1 site
- Alopias vulpinus1 site
- Antidorcas1 site
- Antilopini1 site
- Arctocephalus1 site
- Australithax1 site
- Balaenopteridae1 site
- Balistidae1 site
- Bathyergidae1 site
- Berardiinae1 site
- Calonectris1 site
- Carcharias1 site
- Carcharias taurus1 site
- Carcharodon1 site
- Carcharodon carcharias1 site
- Ceratotherium1 site
- Connochaetes1 site
- Conus1 site
- Cuspidaria1 site
- Dege hendeyi1 site
- Delphinidae1 site
- Dentalium1 site
- Diunatans1 site
- Eubalaena1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Izikoziphius, 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
4 references- A high diversity in fossil beaked whales (Mammalia, Odontoceti, Ziphiidae) recovered by trawling from the sea floor off South Africa2
- A 5.3-million-year-old deep-sea whale necropolis in the Diamantina Zone1
- Fossil cetaceans from Duinefontein (Koeberg) an early Pliocene site on the southwestern Cape, South Africa1
- Neogene and Quaternary fossil remains of beaked whales (Cetacea, Odontoceti, Ziphiidae) from deep-sea deposits off Crozet and Kerguelen islands, Southern Ocean1
Each of the 5 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. 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 content1
Picture of Izikoziphius
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Giovanni Bianucci, Olivier Lambert, and Klaas Post
- Licence
- CC0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Izikoziphius was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itZiphiinae through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Bianucci et al. 2007