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-rangetaxonomy · 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:taxonomybiogeography · 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:biogeographyecology · 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:ecologymorphology · 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
A missing branch or fossil occurrence does not imply biological absence. Internal nodes are not calibrated divergence estimates.