Paleoecology and taphonomy of Neogene cetaceans: New perspectives from the southwestern Atlantic Ocean

Abstract

The Neogene was a key time for cetaceans diversification and cosmopolitan distribution, mainly driven by important changes in global climate and ocean productivity. Neogene deposits from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the Mediterranean and North Seas provide a rich cetacean fossil record from this critical evolutionary time. In the Southwestern Atlantic Ocean, Miocene outcrops in Patagonia (Argentina) hold an important, albeit still poorly known, fossil record of modern lineages (= Neoceti) which in the last ten years have been continuously and exhaustively explored from a systematic, paleoecological, and taphonomic points of view. The most fossiliferous cetacean’s outcrops comprise the lower Miocene Gaiman Formation, the upper Miocene Puerto Madryn Formation, and the Bajo del Gualicho Formation of uncertain Miocene age. Numerous specimens were collected in the XIX century, and many have been recently studied taxonomically and anatomically. Modern fieldwork efforts have resulted in new and more well-preserved specimens, increasing the taxonomic diversity of the assemblage but also the taphonomic and paleoecological information.