life Article Extensive Diversity and Disparity of the Early Miocene Platanistoids (Cetacea, Odontoceti) in the Southeastern Pacific (Chilcatay Formation, Peru) Giovanni Bianucci 1,* , Christian de Muizon 2, Mario Urbina 3 and Olivier Lambert 4 1 Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università di Pisa, 56126 Pisa, Italy 2 CR2P (CNRS, MNHN, SU), Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Département Origines et Évolution, 75005 Paris, France;
[email protected] 3 Departamento de Paleontología de Vertebrados, Museo de Historia Natural de la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima 15072, Peru;
[email protected] 4 Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique, D.O. Terre et Histoire de la Vie, 1000 Brussels, Belgium;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected] Received: 14 February 2020; Accepted: 16 March 2020; Published: 18 March 2020 Abstract: Several aspects of the fascinating evolutionary history of toothed and baleen whales (Cetacea) are still to be clarified due to the fragmentation and discontinuity (in space and time) of the fossil record. Here we open a window on the past, describing a part of the extraordinary cetacean fossil assemblage deposited in a restricted interval of time (19–18 Ma) in the Chilcatay Formation (Peru). All the fossils here examined belong to the Platanistoidea clade as here redefined, a toothed whale group nowadays represented only by the Asian river dolphin Platanista gangetica. Two new genera and species, the hyper-longirostrine Ensidelphis riveroi and the squalodelphinid Furcacetus flexirostrum, are described together with new material referred to the squalodelphinid Notocetus vanbenedeni and fragmentary remains showing affinities with the platanistid Araeodelphis. Our cladistic analysis defines the new clade Platanidelphidi, sister-group to Allodelphinidae and including E.