Archaeoceti

Archaeoceti Temporal range: 54–23 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N
Cynthiacetus and Ambulocetus skeletons
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Artiodactyla
Infraorder:	Cetacea
Informal group:	†Archaeoceti Flower, 1883
Families and clades
See text

Archaeoceti ("ancient whales"), or Zeuglodontes in older literature, is a paraphyletic group of primitive cetaceans that lived from the Early Eocene to the late Oligocene (50 to 23 million years ago).^[1] Representing the earliest cetacean radiation, they include the initial amphibious stages in cetacean evolution, thus are the ancestors of both modern cetacean suborders, Mysticeti and Odontoceti.^[2] This initial diversification occurred in the shallow waters that separated India and Asia 53 to 45 mya, resulting in some 30 species adapted to a fully oceanic life. Echolocation and filter-feeding evolved during a second radiation 36 to 35 mya.^[3]

All archaeocetes from the Ypresian (56–47.8 mya) and most from the Lutetian (47.8–41.3 mya) are known exclusively from Indo-Pakistan, but Bartonian (41.3–38.0 mya) and Priabonian (38.0–33.9 mya) genera are known from across Earth, including North America, Egypt, New Zealand, and Europe. Although no consensus exists regarding the mode of locomotion of which cetaceans were capable during the late Lutetian, they were very unlikely to be nearly as well-adapted to the open ocean as living cetaceans. They probably reached as far as North America along coastal waters, either around Africa and over to South America, or more likely, over the Tethys Sea (between Eurasia and Africa) and along the coasts of Europe, Greenland, and North America.^[4]

The archaeocetes are paraphyletic in relation to their extant modern descendants, the Neoceti (neocetes). Neocetes consist of two subgroups, the toothed whales (odontocetes) and the baleen whales (mysticetes).^[5][6]