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Ancient life · Mammals and their kin

Dorudon

An early whale that lived wholly in the sea.

Our sources give no reliable size for Dorudon, so this outline of its body shape is not drawn to scale.

When
About 40 to 33 million years ago
Where
Ancient seas
A long whale skeleton with a toothy skull hanging in a museum.
A Dorudon skeleton, built for life wholly in the sea.Skeleton of Dorudon atrox by Momotarou2012, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Resized. This version is shared under CC BY-SA 3.0 too.

By the time of Dorudon, between 40 and 33 million years ago, whales had completely adapted to life in the water. Its descendants evolved into the modern whales.

About 34 million years ago, one group began to feed in a new way, filtering food from the water. These became the baleen whales, which include the blue whale.

Dorudon640 Manow
Dorudon: 40 to 33 million years ago. That is 0.9% of the way back to the Earth’s birth.Periods from the ICS chart

Read more in The age of mammals.

Also in mammals and their kin

  • Dimetrodon A sail-backed hunter on our side of the family tree
  • Brasilodon Possibly the oldest mammal, or one of its closest relatives
  • Morganucodon A tiny early mammal named after Glamorgan
  • Pakicetus One of the first whales, with four legs
  • Blue whale The largest animal ever to live
  • Woolly mammoth An Ice Age elephant of the far north

Sources