I've realized over the past few years that part of my blogging slowdown can be blamed on having a job that leaves not much time for research, but also, I slowed down when I began posting on twitter - twitter became 'microblogging' in a way, and it definitely scratched the same itch that blogging did. However, I don't think it's quite as useful, and the prophesied "heat death" of twitter driven by Elon Musk's hostile (and laughably incompetent) takeover of twitter has made me think twice about blogging more often. I've cultivated a decent following on twitter - and it might not be going anywhere - but I shouldn't neglect the opportunity for longer format communication/commentary on marine vertebrate paleontology. That, and in the past couple years, finally got the courage (and knowledge base) to write a series of blog posts about a rather daunting subject: whale and dolphin earbones - those weird little bones people find while searching for shark teeth, and don't know how to make heads or tails from them. So - enjoy!
Read Part 2: identifying toothed whale/dolphin periotics here.
Introduction
Fossil collectors here on the east coast typically start out looking for fossil shark teeth – which are, after all, often some of the easiest fossils to find and recognize. Eventually, however, beginner collectors begin to broaden their search image as they begin to recognize more than just shark teeth. Some of the most unusual specimens are earbones of whales and dolphins – but there is widespread confusion about what the bones are, how they function, and extremely little available to the collector (or, even students/new paleontologists) explaining what the heck these things are and how to identify them. I’ve thought about doing such a useful post for a long time, and I hope to cover some of the basics of anatomy, function, and perhaps most importantly, identification of isolated earbones. Identification will follow this introductory post. Paleocetologists generally don't do much science communication and rarely explain how these earbone things are identified - and many paleocetologists outright avoid studying earbones. Interpreting them is occasionally referred to as a "black art" by some whaleontologists, a sentiment I agreed with when I was still a master's student and just hadn't seen enough of these things. I just love them - the shapes are interesting, finding them is always satisfying, and they're quite informative. I hope that this series of posts will help alleviate much of the ambiguity about earbones and furthermore, help fossil collectors and other whaleontologists out there make some sense of these weird little doodads.
Four periotics and a nice bulla found on a dredge island in Charleston harbor this week - December 2022, after about four hours of looking. Thanks to Ashby Gale and Sarah Boessenecker for searching!
Nuts and Bolts I: Basics of Terrestrial Mammal Ears and Hearing
In order to discuss cetacean earbones, we need to lay the foundation of anatomy of a terrestrial mammal ear. The mammalian ear evolved during the Permian and Triassic from synapsid “mammal like reptiles” – bones from the jaw joint and back of the lower jaw were miniaturized and transitioned into different parts of modern mammalian ear. The mammalian ear is a remarkably complex apparatus cobbled together from these different parts, and the result is a bit of a “Rube Goldberg machine” – made of three major regions: the outer, middle, and inner ear. Hearing of course begins with the external ear itself, called the pinna, which funnels soundwaves into the external ear canal (external auditory meatus). These sound waves travel towards the tympanic membrane, which is a thin layer of skin that separates the middle ear cavity from the outer ear. The tympanic bulla is a thin bony shell connected to rest of the squamosal bone and houses the middle ear cavity inside.
The middle ear is an air-filled cavity – air gets in there through the eustachian tube, which connects to your nasal sinus. The eustachian tube is semi-permanently kinked like a water hose; sufficient pressure inside your nasal sinus or the middle ear will cause the tube to unkink – which is precisely what happens when your ears pop – allowing the pressure to equalize between the middle ear and the ambient air pressure outside your head. Air pressure can also build up if you have an ear infection or a bad cold – which can cause fluid to accumulate and without letting the eustachian tube unkink, worsening the problem. A ruptured eardrum allows air to pass from the outer to the middle ear, and apparently sounds windy. Know someone who had “tubes” in their ears as a kid? These are little tiny tubes stuck in a surgical perforation that allows excess pressure (and fluid… gross) to leave the middle ear (apparently the eustachian tube is narrower and more horizontal in kids causing more frequent ear infections). Because the tympanic membrane is basically skin, the tubes fall out on their own within a year (same reason that some ruptured eardrums will heal on their own).
What happens when a sound wave strikes the ear drum? The ear drum vibrates – and these vibrations are transmitted into the middle ear ossicles – the hammer, anvil, and stirrup. The hammer (malleus) is partially suspended in the membrane. The hammer transmits these vibrations by striking the anvil (incus), which is smaller in mass. The anvil strikes the stirrup (stapes) – which really does look like a stirrup. Each ossicle is smaller than the last, and each vibrates more strongly, but with less movement - long story short, this is a way to translate relatively weak sound waves from the air into sound waves strong enough to move through fluid in the cochlea (see below). This is called 'impedance matching'. Sound waves typically just bounce off of a fluid, so the middle ear ossicles bridge this gap.
The stirrup fits into a hole in the ‘petrous portion’ of the squamosal – petrous meaning stone like. This is the densest part of the skull, and it houses the fluid-filled inner ear cavities – consisting of the vestibule (opening) in the middle, the semicircular canals (responsible for balance) on one side, and the cochlea on the other. The stapes pushes in and out of the vestibular window, pushing the cochlear fluid – and making little waves. These waves travel up the cochlea and stimulate hairs that detect different frequencies. The coiled cochlea is unique to “Therian” mammals – marsupials and placentals – and is implicated in our greater range of frequencies we can hear versus most other vertebrate groups. Monotremes, as well as ‘reptiles’, have a straight or slightly curved cochlear duct that is much shorter, yielding a much lower maximum frequency.
Directional hearing is accomplished through acoustic impedance: the mismatch in timing between left and right ears. If a sound arrives at the right ear slightly earlier than the left, it’s probably closer to the right ear and therefore on the right side. Terrestrial mammal ears are adapted for hearing relatively slow moving soundwaves in air.
Nuts and Bolts II: Cetacean Ears and Aquatic Hearing
There are a couple of major problems with mammalian hearing while underwater, and they relate to the different acoustic properties of water. The first, and most obvious, given that most readers are probably aware of it – is that sound travels about four times faster in water than in air. The second one is that sound waves tend to be transmitted through a medium of the same approximate density; when a soundwave hits a denser medium, or a much lighter one for that matter, most of the wave is not transmitted – most of the wave bounces. This is what an echo is. The density difference between air and flesh is enough to focus echoing soundwaves into the funnel-like external ear – but underwater, water, flesh, and even bone are close enough in density that soundwaves travel unimpeded without bouncing. This, combined with the greater velocity of soundwaves underwater, means that as far as the mammalian brain is concerned – the sound arrives at both ears simultaneously. This means if you’re submerged, and someone yells at you underwater – you won’t be able to tell the direction its coming from. So how do whales and dolphins hear the direction of sounds? They must – otherwise, echolocation would not work.
Cetaceans evolved a number of adaptations toward directional hearing. Early on, the different parts of the squamosal stopped fusing, and remained separate portions: the petrous portion became the petrosal, and the tympanic bulla… well, stayed the bulla, but lost its fused bony connection to the rest of the squamosal. These reduced bony connections are present in archaeocetes, and slightly reduce bone-conducted sounds reaching the cochlea. Dolphins (Odontoceti) continue reducing the bony connections, with less and less of the petrosal having any hard connection with the squamosal – aside from receiving a triangular prong unimaginatively called the “spiny process”, which seems to be the minimum connection, and is retained in all cetaceans. The connections thus become primarily made of soft tissue (which is why some dolphin skulls are rarely preserved with the earbones in articulation). Lastly, many modern cetaceans have evolved peribullary sinuses – connected to the pterygoid sinus system further forward in the head. These sinuses are filled with air – and remember, a difference in density causes echoes. These air sinuses cause incoming sounds to bounce away from the earbones – in concert with the reduced bony connections, resulting in earbones that are acoustically isolated from the skull. The extreme reduction in bony connections in toothed whales is what led to the name periotic, rather than petrosal.
Basic Anatomy and Function of the Tympanic Bulla
The tympanic bulla is a unique bone in cetaceans – well, all mammals have a bony or cartilaginous bulla, but the medial part is thickened into a structure called the involucrum – this thickened lip is unique to cetaceans. What is also unique is that it is largely disconnected from the rest of the skull, as outlined above. At its most simple, the cetacean bulla is made of three major parts: the thickened involucrum, the shell-like outer lip, and the posterior process. The thickened involucrum is present in even the earliest cetaceans, and is actually what resulted in the recognition that the strange deer-like braincase of Pakicetus was an early whale. This massive swollen part is what is preserved 95% of the time: the outer lip, the shell-like part of the bulla, is the part least modified from a land mammal and owing to its fragility, is typically broken away. The involucrum is often cylindrical and typically wider posteriorly; it can be deep and transversely narrow in right whales, or wide and dorsoventrally shallow instead in many dolphins. The involucrum also typically sports some creases on its medial surface. The tympanic cavity – between the outer lip and the involucrum – is filled with air in life, as it is the middle ear sinus. The greater mass of the involucrum helps each bulla vibrate – and these vibrations are transmitted directly to the malleus, which is fused to the outer lip of the bulla. In this capacity, the bulla functions a lot like the eardrum (it is, however not the eardrum, which is of course a soft tissue structure, and cetaceans don’t even have an eardrum any more anyway; fossil collectors often call these “fossil whale eardrums”, which is not accurate).
The bulla connects to the periotic with two small easily broken ‘pedicles’, at least in Crown Mysticeti – the anterior pedicle is located on the anterior part of the outer lip, and the posterior pedicle is positioned near the back of the involucrum. In cetaceans without periotic-bulla fusion, there is a tiny bone called the accessory ossicle that articulates in the position of the anterior pedicle, and the posterior process of the bulla is connected to the posterior pedicle. The posterior processes of the periotic and bulla are frequently similar in shape and variable in length among different cetacean lineages; the articular facets of each interlock and are mirror images in an individual cetacean. On the outer lip, a tongue-like knob of bone is present and called the sigmoid process – just next to it is the attachment point for the malleus (‘hammer’), the largest of the three middle ear ossicles.
Cross-section through an idealized/simplified auditory region of an ancestral archaeocete whale. From Luo and Gingerich, 1999. Caption included for abbreviations.
Basic Periotic Anatomy
We’ve already talked about the interior of the periotic, although it’s expensive and difficult to study as CT scanning is required – and not medical-grade scanners you would find in a hospital, but micro-CT scanners which are fewer and further between. Because of this, few cetaceans have more than one or a few individual cochleae scanned, and we’re not too sure about individual variation of the bony labyrinth. That doesn’t matter, to be honest, because virtually all of the information we use to reconstruct evolutionary relationships (phylogenetic analysis) and to identify isolated periotics or diagnose new species of cetaceans are external features of the periotic.
Periotics can basically be divided into four main parts: the body of the periotic is the densest, most solid part, and is just kind of a lump of bone – the body articulates with the squamosal in the base of the skull. The pars cochlearis is a hemispherical prominence that houses the cochlea – hence the name, meaning the ‘cochlear portion’ in latin. The anterior process is a knob to triangular or sheetlike bit of bone that projects anteriorly beyond the pars cochlearis from the body, and the posterior process in the opposite direction. The anterior process is primitively long in odontocetes and becomes shorter and stubbier, and the opposite occurs in baleen whales: it begins somewhat short and stubby and becomes longer in some mysticetes.
General features of the bulla and periotic of a baleen whale - from Marx et al. (2016).
The body of the periotic is of variable thickness and shape but often ovoid to spherical, and can be smooth or rugose. The pars cochlearis is typically smaller and hemispherical in shape amongst Neoceti – but in archaeocetes, is frequently rectangular. The pars cochlearis is perforated by several holes (foramina and fenestrae), including two apertures for endolymph and perilymph which fill the two different divisions of the bony labyrinth – and are also called the apertures for the cochlear aqueduct and vestibular aqueduct. The fenestra rotunda (round window) is present posteroventrally on the pars cochlearis and has a little membrane that can bow out to accommodate fluid displaced internally when the stapes is pushed into the oval window (fenestra ovalis), which is positioned at the junction of the pars cochlearis and body. Just lateral to this is the ventral opening for the facial canal, which transmits the facial nerve (Cranial nerve #7, out of 12). Dorsally, there is a large hole – sometimes funnel-shaped, sometimes a pair of holes – which include the dorsal opening for the facial nerve canal, and the dorsal opening of the vestibulocochlear nerve (Cranial nerve #8). The ‘endocranial’ openings for cranial nerves 7 and 8 are separated by a small crest called the transverse crest or crista transversa – if the crest is very high, the foramina appear separated. If not, the foramina are confluent within a structure called the ‘internal acoustic meatus’. Lateral to the meatus, in archaic baleen whales and dolphins, as well as archaeocetes, there is a large fossa formed on the dorsal side of the body called the suprameatal fossa – this is bordered laterally by a tall ridge that abuts the squamosal, called the superior ridge. This ridge is present only in archaeocetes and the most primitive dolphins and toothed baleen whales, and is rapidly lost independently in both groups. Ventrally, lateral to the ventral opening for the facial nerve canal, there is a pit for the malleus (mallear fossa) and a laterally directed tuberosity – called the lateral tuberosity, typically lateral to the mallear fossa.
The anterior process is a bit of a simple structure and varies somewhat in shape and whether or not it bears a sulcus medially and laterally for nerves/arteries or a furrow for the tensor tympani muscle (same muscle you use to pop your ears, and if you can wiggle your ears, you often accidentally tense it; it pulls a little bit on the malleus and briefly disengages the ‘ossicular chain’, e.g. malleus/hammer, incus/anvil, stapes/stirrup – so you hear a slight difference in sound). The anterior process has a facet for the bulla ventrally, called the anterior bullar facet; this facet is lost in many baleen whales and some dolphins, and is a bit of a primitive feature. The gap between the anterior process and the pars cochlearis is called the anterior incisure – and the angle at which the pars cochlearis and anterior process join is diagnostic, with a 90 degree angle in archaeocetes, toothed mysticetes and odontocetes, an acute angle in mostly modern-group (crown group) odontocetes, and an obtuse angle in most toothless mysticetes.
The posterior process joins the posterior process of the tympanic bulla in archaeocetes, early mysticetes, and odontocetes, and in most toothless mysticetes, the posterior process of the periotic and bulla are fused together and form a compound posterior process. In whales and dolphins with unfused posterior processes, the periotic has a posterior bullar facet for the posterior process of the bulla; this facet can be convex (typically in early baleen whales and squalodontid dolphins), flat, or concave (typically in dolphins) and smooth or bear ridges and grooves; the facet is typically constructed from very dense bone. The posterior process is typically sandwiched between the squamosal and exoccipital bones. Primitively, in archaeocete whales, the posterior process reaches the lateral side of the skull but in Neoceti – the clade formed by odontocetes and mysticetes – the posterior process is shortened and obscured from view by the bulla and the squamosal bone.
Some of the major differences in the earbones of a dolphin (top) and baleen whale (bottom). From Yamato and Pyenson, 2015.
Major Differences Between Archaeocete, Odontocete, and Mysticete Periotics
We will mostly sidestep archaeocete periotics, with a few exceptions in order to illustrate the common shape that odontocete and mysticete periotics evolved from. Basilosaurid whales have large, rectangular pars cochlearis, a short anterior process, a very tall superior ridge, and a broad, deep suprameatal fossa. Your odds of finding an archaeocete periotic are exceedingly rare, and in the USA, would basically require you to be prospecting in Eocene quarries of the Carolinas or perhaps Alabama or Mississippi. I’ve only seen about a half dozen isolated archaeocete periotics discovered, and they are more frequently found in articulation with a skull – owing to the superior ridge, and broad contact with the squamosal – they rarely become disarticulated.
The biggest difference between odontocete and mysticete periotics is size – baleen whales have big periotics, and dolphins (and all odontocetes, to be honest) have small periotics. There are some fossil dwarf mysticetes out there with small earbones, and many toothed mysticetes are quite small, but the former are still much larger than most extinct odontocete periotics and are similar in size to the largest periotics of modern odontocetes (e.g. sperm whale, killer whale) and the latter are very, very rare and you probably will not ever find one (unless you collect at some choice localities in the Pacific Northwest or Australia). Most fossil odontocetes are still nowhere near as large as orcas or sperm whales. If you find something that is HUGE but looks like a dolphin, you’ve found something interesting! There are some giant dolphins from the rock record, represented only by giant, orca-sized periotics not found in association with a skull (from both coasts of North America). Virtually all fossil odontocete periotics are under 4 cm in length when complete, and even the smallest toothless baleen whales have a periotic (not counting the posterior process) that is usually larger. That being said, the size of the cochlea and the pars cochlearis does correlate strongly with body size (and within some groups of fossil whales and dolphins, the pars cochlearis diameter can be used to estimate body size).
Most odontocete periotics have a proportionally large pars cochlearis and a relatively small, narrow body, and a roughly cylindrical anterior process and a short posterior process; when the pars cochlearis is broken away, the rest of the bone is somewhat sausage-shaped.
In toothless mysticetes, except for the Eomysticetidae, the posterior processes are fused into a compound process – this can be plug-shaped or long and strap-shaped. In most toothless baleen whales other than right whales, there is a very narrow ‘neck’ of the compound process and as a result it frequently breaks off. Balaenopterid whale posterior processes are long and curved, and in large individuals, about the size and shape of a banana. In gigantic Pliocene and modern mysticetes, the posterior process can be over 30 cm long! Baleen whale periotics are also very rugose and tend to have rough, porous, knobby, and spiky surfaces. Such surfaces are common only in the most gigantic of modern odontocetes and quite rare even in large extinct odontocetes, though some limited rugosity can be seen in the very tips of the anterior and posterior process in very ‘elderly’ odontocetes.
Other features that vary between families are given variable names – you can think of these as topographically positive and negative features. Tuberosites, processes, and tubercles are anything that is mound-shaped or higher. A ridge is precisely that – a long, linear feature with a crest, though crest is sometimes used instead. Anything that is mound-like is usually called a prominence or a tuberosity; anything longer, or consistently present in most species, is called a process. Furrows, fissures, and grooves are all excavated linear features – fissures usually refer to a gap that is closing during bone growth but still remains as a gap between bony parts that fails to fill in; furrows and grooves are somewhat interchangeable and are shallower and typically wider than fissures. Sulci are similar but have smooth walls and clearly form from ossification around a nerve or artery; canals are similar but fully enclosed and refer to holes that transmit one of the cranial nerves or a derivative thereof (e.g. facial nerve canal). Foramina are holes transmitting smaller nerves or arteries of known or unknown identity; they are frequently more variable than cranial nerve canals.
We also use shape terms you may or may not be familiar with, and I’ll try to use only terms that are likely to be self-evident – cylindrical, flattened, hemispherical, rectangular, triangular, etc. I actually prefer such simplicity in my actual scientific writing as well; my Ph.D. adviser was a big fan of single-use words like ‘cordate’ or ‘cordiform’ instead of ‘heart-shaped’, but I find the latter to be more inclusive even if it uses two words instead of one. This blog post is already 13 pages and growing and therefore already guilty of indulgence, so why stop there?
How to Find Fossil Periotics (and Bullae)
There’s not much of a trick to finding fossil periotics aside from 1) knowing what they look like and 2) looking in the right places. Periotics are rare – on the east coast, you will find hundreds of shark teeth for each periotic you find – and they are heavy. You best look for bone-rich layers or beaches with strandlines full of periotic-sized pebbles. This is because water does not care what a fossil belongs to –waves and currents will concentrate objects of similar density and size into discrete bands along shorelines – this is a concept called ‘hydraulic equivalence’. A slightly denser, but smaller, object will be concentrated with slightly larger, less dense objects – to a point. Shells will often be in a different place along a beach, because they are lighter and have a large surface area; you’ll often find small teeth mixed in. Here in the Charleston region, I would look for phosphatic pebble rich strandlines along our waterways and then try and find the ‘diamond in the rough’ by looking for periotic-shaped objects. Even for an expert this can be quite mentally exhausting and I’ve gotten many a headache on coastal field trips here in Charleston trying to spot a periotic amongst a sea of one hundred thousand phosphatic lumps of the same exact color. [That’s usually my cue to sit down for a while and drink some Gatorade].
An even nicer periotic of a possible waipatiid or eurhinodelphinid laying dorsal up, but not amongst a sea of gravel.
Looking for periotics or tympanic bullae is no different from looking for shark teeth – it’s just much, much less intuitive given the strange shapes that earbones take on. We joke around about looking for “black triangles” and many folks don’t know how to find shark teeth – but they’re quite intuitive in my opinion, and if they are there on a beach, they’re unmistakable. If you can’t find shark teeth, perhaps stop reading now and come back to this after a year or two of practice: finding earbones is hard work and a bit more of an advanced collecting ‘target’. But, once you’ve mastered the search for shark teeth – and you can readily identify a complete, partially exposed, or fragment of a tooth on a beach or in a cliff – you’ve done so because you can recognize patterns and have memorized the shape and surface texture of many different shark teeth. Finding earbones is no different: the shapes are just… weirder. But once you’re familiar with them, you develop a search image. It’s also good practice to just pick up anything 1) you’re absolutely sure is not a pebble and 2) anything you are pretty confident is a fossil, but cannot immediately identify. This strategy will let you start finding some of the more uncommon odds and ends like prismatic cartilage fragments, large ray denticles, bird bones, and osteoderms (skin bones/armor) of armadillos, turtles, gators, glyptodonts, and more – as well as earbones.
A very difficult to spot dolphin periotic amongst a sea of similarly sized phosphate pebbles. When exploring phosphate spoils, it pays to slow down, get a foam kneepad and go a couple feet at a time. The periotic on the right is not the same specimen, but similar (and flipped over).
One last word of advice: most people have no idea what earbones are. This means that in Charleston, I have a decent shot at finding what I’m REALLY after, no matter where I go collecting or when – if folks are out there on a beach or riverbank before me, odds are, they are only searching for ‘black triangles’. On Thursday we visited a spot on a sand bar that has been open to boaters since mid October – and the three of us found four periotics (three of them totally complete) in a morning, despite hosting hundreds of shark tooth collectors each week for six weeks for the second winter in a row after harbor dredgings were dumped. There is always going to be a fossil collector who is more obsessed and competitive than you are, doing all sorts of crazy shit for the chance to score a bigger shark tooth – I like my mornings too much for that, and quite frankly, the extreme measures some people take begins to make me worry about their mental well-being. Out on one of our barrier islands, I heard of a couple guys who go out there at 4am (by boat, since it’s an island without a bridge/causeway) with spotlights and stay out there until the following low tide. Yeah, that’s a no from me. I’ll get up slightly earlier, drink a coffee or two, and once I’m feeling like I’m among the living again, then I’ll drive out to do some beach walking. I fully understand that someone will almost certainly find larger and better shark teeth than I will – that’s fine! What I’m looking for are more scientifically interesting than shark teeth, and nobody else really looks for them, so the chance is always there. If I find some nice shark teeth, great! But that’s not my goal. Loose, beach-cast shark teeth are fun to find, but are not scientifically significant.
A smattering of dolphin earbones, and one partial mysticete bulla, from various localities we prospected in winter 2019 through summer 2020 - many of these are pandemic finds, made after we were allowed to use boat ramps and go to publicly owned access points again in late April/early May when lockdown was beginning to ease up. Eoplatanista, waipatiids, eurhinodelphinids, squalodelphinids, and delphinids are all present, representing Oligocene, Miocene, and Pliocene dolphins. This also showcases variability in preservation - out of all of these specimens, only three are complete, and half are around 2/3 complete or so. Note how at least one of the the anterior or posterior processes, or the pars cochlearis, is busted off.
Preservation of Fossil Earbones
Tympanic bullae and periotics are dense bones, which means they are quite resistant to abrasion. Their higher density, however, means that they are more susceptible to fracturing than other bones are. In fact, tympanic bullae in particular often have conchoidal fracture – the same sort of spalled fracture you see in flint, obsidian, and glass. This means that earbones are quite susceptible to damage if dropped or packed improperly during fieldwork. If found in the side of a cliff, they are often fractured already and will readily break if not excavated carefully. At some fossil sites this means NO HAMMERING – I was instructed early on by one of my whaleontological mentors that you can carve away at the rock with a knife, but hammering will likely shatter a bulla; periotics are a bit more robust. The posterior process of the bulla is usually the first part of the bulla to be lost, and followed shortly thereafter by the outer lip, which is missing in most fossil bullae. In periotics, the anterior or posterior process frequently have chips missing; sometimes the pars cochlearis is fractured, permitting a view of the cochlea itself.
Because earbones are so dense and resistant to damage, they are often found concentrated in bonebeds where other bones from the rest of the skeleton are frequently highly damaged. In cases like this you can prospect bonebeds to get a sense of the diversity of an ancient marine mammal assemblage without having to find dozens of large, difficult to excavate skulls. Based on the Purisima Formation in coastal California, perhaps half of our whale and dolphin species are known only from earbones, and only the most common species are also represented by skulls. It's a bit different here in Charleston, as confirmed earbones collected isolated from the Ashley and Chandler Bridge formations are rare and harder to find than a skull or skeleton - so most of our earbones are actually found in association with more complete skeletons, but this is entirely because the exposures here are quite different. Bonebeds cannot be surveyed over long periods of time with many visits, as the exposures are ephemeral and only the largest fossils are likely to be found.
Notes on Geographic Scope
This series is focused on fossils from North America, and in particular, localities where loose periotics can be found. As a result, I’m going to gloss over groups known only from the Pacific Northwest, like the Simocetidae, which are generally only found by extremely non-casual collectors and only found in concretions; those periotics can only be freed from the rock through painstaking airscribing or acid preparation. Likewise, I am sadly going to be ignoring much of the rest of the world, but only “sort of” – Miocene cetaceans are generally pretty cosmopolitan, and aside from a few random weirdos out there known only from one locality, virtually all of the groups I’m summarizing are known from fossiliferous localities in Japan, NZ, Australia, South America, Europe, and South Africa. Basically, for Miocene and Pliocene cetaceans, you will find very similar periotics between the east coast and Europe as well as South Africa. Fossils from the west coast share quite a bit with Japan, Peru, and Chile. Oligocene fossils from the Carolinas are similar in some respects to those from New Zealand.
Comments on Cetacean Taxonomy and Periotics
This simple review is going to deal with identifying specimens down to the family level – many readers are likely wondering what that is. Families are one of the three lowest fundamental taxonomic units – species and genera being the lowermost units that fit within families. You can think of a family as a closely related ‘collection’ of genera. These historically have been assigned ranks under traditional Linnean Taxonomy – which is old fashioned and inflexible, and we no longer rely on this method for classifying species. We now use cladistics to reconstruct the tree of life. However, genera and species are still critical taxonomic units, and though some cladists reading this might roll their eyes, so are families – and for the purpose of this writeup, families are actually pretty useful: inclusive enough to lump a bunch of species with similar periotics together so as not to overwhelm the reader, and most of these groups have some cladistic support. There are some groups that were traditionally called families but do not appear to be closely related – such as the “Kelloggitheres”, or Cetotheriidae sensu lato – all of these typically middle Miocene baleen whales Remington Kellogg named in the early to mid 20th century and then kicked out of the Cetotheriidae over the past 15 years. When it comes to their periotics, even though the “Kelloggitheres” are a ‘paraphyletic’ grouping – their earbones are all very similar and will constitute a single entry.
More critically, there are some larger group names I am going to use that you will need to be familiar with, and some taxonomic terms we’ve adopted from advances in cladistics. First, crown v. stem – the crown group is the most inclusive group of species represented by modern lineages; Crown Cetacea therefore is the group including modern odontocetes and mysticetes, but excluding Stem Cetacea – species that branched off before the Crown Cetacea split. Crown Cetacea is typically called Neoceti – and stem cetaceans are the “Archaeocetes” - ancient cetaceans that showcase the land to sea transition (pakicetids, ambulocetids, remingtonocetids, protocetids, and basilosaurids). Crown Mysticeti is the group including right whales, gray whales, balaenopterids, and pygmy right whales (all modern) but excluding eomysticetids and all toothed mysticetes – collectively, these are the stem mysticetes. Toothed mysticetes exclude the eomysticetids. Crown odontocetes include sperm whales, beaked whales, “river dolphins” (four families), delphinoids (porpoises, oceanic dolphins, and belugas), and a couple of extinct groups such the kentriodontids, allodelphinids, eurhinodelphinids, eoplatanistids, and squalodelphinids. Stem odontocetes are mostly known from the Oligocene and early Miocene and mostly include the xenorophids, agorophiids, waipatiids, and squalodontids. Aside from these, there are a few additional names I might use elsewhere in this series of posts: Chaeomysticeti refers to all toothless mysticetes – the Eomysticetidae + Crown Mysticeti group. Delphinida refers to most modern dolphins and extinct allies that are more closely related to the Delphinoidea than they are to either the Ganges river dolphin Platanista, sperm whales, or beaked whales. Delphinoidea all have similar periotics, and include at minimum belugas/narwhal (Monodontidae), true porpoises (Phocoenidae), and the oceanic dolphins (Delphinidae) and also the extinct Albireonidae and likely the Kentriodontidae – perhaps the common ancestors of all delphinoids. Members of the Delphinida that lie outside the Delphinoidea include the Lipotidae (Yangtze River Dolphin and the extinct Parapontoporia) as well as the South American river dolphins, including modern and fossil relatives of the Amazon River dolphin Inia (Iniidae) and the La Plata river dolphin or Franciscana (Pontoporia and Pontoporiidae). A more controversial clade is the Platanistoidea – formerly a wastebasket for all weird crown odontocetes with earbones and snouts similar to the Ganges river dolphin as well as all other river dolphin groups, now a more restricted group certainly including the Platanistidae, Squalodelphinidae, and Allodelphinidae. Squalodontidae, Waipatiidae, and some others are groups formerly assigned to the Platanistoidea.
Periotic bones and to a lesser degree, tympanic bullae, are useful for defining (‘diagnosing’) extinct cetacean species. Within Neoceti, the periotic is often loosely connected to the skull and as a result it is not only frequently found isolated, but also skulls are often found lacking periotics. It is preferable to name species from fossil material preserving periotics, whenever possible. Standards for the quality of type specimens – name-bearing specimens that genera and species are founded upon – have never been set and recommendations rarely made, but Larry Barnes wrote in the 1970s that type specimens should not be founded upon isolated earbones or postcrania, and should include skull material and hopefully earbones. Archaeocete taxonomy is a different beast altogether – many archaeocete whale holotypes are isolated vertebrae or strings of vertebrae, and few consist of skulls. Even more troubling is the emphasis of postcranial features and the apparent timidness of archaeocete paleontologists to describe skull features in detail. So, even some basilosaurid whales with well-preserved skulls have skull descriptions that are shorter than the description of the thoracic (ribcage) vertebrae and often not enough figures of the skull, teeth, and earbones.
One of Remington Kellogg's holotype periotics from the middle Miocene Sharktooth Hill bonebed - the holotype of Grypolithax obscura, recombined in the 1980s as Kentriodon obscurus owing to similarities with Kentriodon pernix and the discovery of a Kentriodon pernix-like skull in the Sharktooth Hill bonebed. Much effort has been required to chase down and establish genus-level synonymies for these problematic taxa. Not having skulls with associated periotics is admittedly frustrating. Remington Kellogg published a paper in the 1930s which established several new genera and species of odontocetes based on isolated periotics from the middle Miocene Sharktooth Hill Bonebed. He did this because the periotic assemblage revealed more diversity than skull material – and also, at the time, there wasn’t really much skull material preserved at all! Odontocete skulls are relatively fragile, and rarely found intact within the bonebed. Most of these are likely all kentriodontids, some are synonymous with each other, and at least one is the allodephinid Zarhinocetus errabundus – originally named Squalodon errabundus by Kellogg. It took decades of collecting before more complete specimens preserved skulls in association with earbones (e.g. Zarhinocetus errabundus), or before some periotic-species could be assigned to species known from more complete material elsewhere, such as Kentriodon obscurus. Kellogg *almost* started a split off field of ‘parataxonomy’. ‘Parataxonomy’ is a situation that arises from the naming of fossils that may never correspond to the main field of body fossils, which in this case, would be species named from skulls. Ootaxonomy – the naming of fossil eggs – and Ichnotaxonomy – the naming of trace fossils – are two such examples of well-established fields of parataxonomy. We want to avoid naming new species from earbones, mostly because that establishes two different systems or sets of names – though there is always the possibility of discovering skulls with associated periotics to establish which names are synonymous. The proliferation of names of fossil sharks based on different tooth positions is a prime example – the species Cretoxyrhina mantelli is the ultimate senior synonym of over 100 named species of fossil mackerel sharks.
Thanks for this! I was able to handle a large tympanic bulla at a museum today and wasn’t familiar with them- I know some human osteology and can often ID animal bones by comparison but these have such unusual and fascinating shapes!
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