A new species of Africanacetus (Odontoceti: Ziphiidae) found on the deep ocean floor off the coast of Brazil

A fossil skull of a beaked whale was newly collected by a manned submersible from the São Paulo Ridge of the Atlantic floor about 2900 m deep off the coast of Brazil. It was found in the middle of the manganese nodules on the seafloor. The whale fossil can be dated sometime between the middle Miocene and the early Pliocene based on the timing of the onset of the tectonic movements of the São Paulo Ridge whence the specimen came and the precipitation of the manganese layers, which entirely encrusted the specimen. This is the first instance of a fossil beaked whale skull retrieved from such great depths. This skull belongs to a new species of Africanacetus, which may be a genus with a broad distribution in southern oceans in Neogene times, expands the geographic distribution of the genus as the northernmost record, and adds the taxonomic and morphological diversity within the genus.