Peer Review #1 of "A Miocene pygmy right whale fossil from Australia (v0.2)"
Year: 2018

Neobalaenines are an enigmatic group of baleen whales represented today by a single living species: the pygmy right whale, Caperea marginata, found only in the Southern Hemisphere.Molecular divergence estimates date the origin of pygmy right whales to 22-26 Ma, yet to date there are only three confirmed fossil occurrences.Here, we describe an isolated periotic from the latest Miocene of Victoria (Australia).The new fossil shows all the hallmarks of Caperea, making it the second-oldest described