Paleontologists discovered fossils of four ancient whales of the genus Zygiocetes near Kerch on the banks of the Melek Chesme River in a limestone reef. One cetacean has an almost complete skeleton. The animals lived in this region 14-10 million years ago, when the Sarmatian Sea existed on the site of the Black, Caspian and Aral Seas.
“This is the first find of representatives of the Zygiocetes (small cetoterium whales) in the Crimea, representatives of this genus were previously known only from Adygea,” said Konstantin Tarasenko, senior researcher at the A. A. Borisyak Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, candidate of biological sciences. Adyghe whales, their Crimean relatives lack interparietal bones, there are other similar signs.The age of the deposits in which the fossils were found was about 11 million years old. There was a large age on the territory of the Northwest Caucasus Rioni Bay, and the Sarmatian Sea washed the island of Crimea and the Caucasus Peninsula.
The name of the Zygiocetes comes from the name of the zyg. This name was used by the ancient Greeks and Romans in relation to the tribes living in the north-west of the Caucasus. The length of the whales was 3-4 meters, the animals fed on aquatic organisms. They were the relatives of modern blue whales.
Blogs
