부산대학교 도서관

A new mysticete, consisting of an incomplete skeleton with a partially preserved skull, dislocated tympanic bullae, a number of vertebrae, ribs and fore arm fragments from the locality of Groß Pampau in North Germany is presented here. The find is of Serravallian/Tortonian age and shows most similarities with the genus Thinocetus. The specimen has a combination of unique characters and is interpreted as belonging to the basal thalassotherians. An affiliation to the Cetotheriidae is not indicated. Larger mysticetes occurred in environments connected to open oceans that could provide better food resources, which could explain the larger size of the Groß Pampau specimen. A migration habit between the North Sea embayment and the open Atlantic could be hypothesized here. Transgression events that created local marine evolutionary centres in European waters increased the generation of new whale populations, presumably by isolation of gene pools in the local fauna, a reason why so many unique combinations of morphological characters and different cetacean species occur in the Neogene marine European realm.