Neophocaena phocaenoides
The Indo-Pacific finless porpoise is one of eight porpoise species. The species ranges throughout most of the Indian Ocean, as well as the tropical and subtropical Pacific from Indonesia north to the Taiwan Strait. Overlapping with this species in the Taiwan Strait and replacing it northwards is the East Asian finless porpoise.

Post of Indonesia · Public Domain · 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- Also called
- finless porpoisePBDB
- Sits inside
- NeophocaenaPBDB
- Diet
- piscivorePBDB, for Phocoenidae
- Life habit
- aquatic, depth=surfacePBDB, for Cetacea
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Cetacea
- Environment
- marine,freshwaterPBDB, for Odontoceti
Time the record covers
At most 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
7 occurrences of Neophocaena phocaenoides on record, most of them in the Holocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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 occurrences- Pleistocene14%
- Holocene86%
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.
Neophocaena phocaenoides and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Neophocaena phocaenoides and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
17 taxa- Bos (Bibos)1 site
- Bovinae1 site
- Cervus1 site
- Cervus schomburgki1 site
- Cervus unicolor1 site
- Cetacea1 site
- Crocodylus porosus1 site
- Delphinus1 site
- Eubalaena australis1 site
- Grampus1 site
- Kogia breviceps1 site
- Lagenorhynchus obscurus1 site
- Mesoplodon layardii1 site
- Muntiacus muntjak1 site
- Rucervus eldii1 site
- Steno1 site
- Testudines1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Neophocaena phocaenoides, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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 morphological comparison of skulls of the finless porpoise Neophocaena phocaenoides from the Indian Ocean, Yangtze River and Japanese waters4
- Fossil finless propoise, Neophocaena phocaenoides, from the Seto Island Sea, Japan1
- Catalog of Living Whales1
- A review of cetacean fossils from the Holocene Gulf of Ayutthaya1
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. 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 Neophocaena phocaenoides
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Post of Indonesia
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Laser scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Credit
- LACM Mammalogy
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Neophocaena phocaenoides · LACM:Mammals:86041
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 itNeophocaena through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Cuvier 1829)