EVO ATLASEN中文
Atlas home / Catalog / Pakicetus
Catalog / genus

Pakicetus

Thewissen et al. report a wolf-sized Pakicetus attocki reconstruction from separately catalogued early-Eocene material at one Pakistani site; cranial and postcranial anatomy supports a terrestrial locomotor interpretation.

Represented range50–48 Ma
Content packagecetartiodactyla
PBDBtxn:42935

Evidence boundary

Automated checks cover structure, identifiers, translations and links only; maintainer and external expert review are not complete.

Claim ledger

fossil-range · medium

Pakicetus is anchored here only by the H-GSP Locality 62 sample from Ganda Kas, including separately catalogued cranial and postcranial material within an approximately 50–48 Ma locality envelope; this is not a global genus range or first appearance.

claim:taxon:pakicetus:fossil-range
taxonomy · high

Thewissen et al. report Pakicetus attocki as a wolf-sized early Eocene pakicetid cetacean and use its skeletons in a morphology-based analysis; the sampled placement is a matrix result, not a demonstrated direct ancestor.

claim:taxon:pakicetus:taxonomy
biogeography · high

The profiled Pakicetus material is bounded to H-GSP Locality 62 at Ganda Kas in the Kala Chitta Hills, Punjab, Pakistan, within the early Eocene Kuldana Formation; this single-site sample does not establish a complete geographic distribution.

claim:taxon:pakicetus:biogeography
ecology · medium

The described Pakicetus locomotor skeleton is interpreted as terrestrial and running-adapted, while the paper cautions that auditory specializations do not by themselves imply aquatic life; diet, behaviour and performance are not directly observed.

claim:taxon:pakicetus:ecology
morphology · high

Skull H-GSP 96231 and separately catalogued postcranial elements including humerus H-GSP 92042 and calcaneum H-GSP 96420 document the Pakicetus reconstruction; the skull retains a cetacean-like ear region and the postcrania show weight-bearing and running features.

claim:taxon:pakicetus:morphology

Known limits

References

  1. Skeletons of terrestrial cetaceans and the relationship of whales to artiodactylsThewissen, J.G.M.; Williams, E.M.; Roe, L.J.; Hussain, S.T. · 2001 · DOI 10.1038/35095005
  2. Open Tree of Life web servicesOpenTreeOfLife Project
  3. The Paleobiology Database application programming interfacePeters, S.E.; McClennen, M. · 2016 · DOI 10.1017/pab.2015.39
  4. Denormalized occurrence and taxon tables of the Paleobiology DatabaseThe Paleobiology Database Community; Kocsis, Á.T. · 2026 · DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21620933
Report an evidence issue ↗