Flandriacetus gijseni was an early beaked whale that lived during the late Miocene, about 8 million years ago, in nearshore marine waters covering what is now the Netherlands.
Around 4m long (~13'), it had a long snout lined with small sharp teeth – unlike modern beaked whales which are mostly toothless – and much like its close relative Messapicetus it probably led a more dolphin-like lifestyle feeding on small fish near the surface.
It's currently the youngest known example of a long-snouted stem beaked whale, a holdover from a time when these cetaceans were much more ecologically diverse than they are today.
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References:
Bianucci, Giovanni, et al. "New beaked whales from the late Miocene of Peru and evidence for convergent evolution in stem and crown Ziphiidae (Cetacea, Odontoceti)." PeerJ 4 (2016): e2479. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2479
Post, K., Bosselaers, M., & Munsterman, D. "A new longirostrine beaked whale Flandriacetus gijseni Gen. et sp. nov. (Ziphiidae, Cetacea, Mammalia) from the Tortonian of the North Sea Basin." Deinsea 23 (2025): 1-31. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17880020
Ramassamy, Benjamin, et al. "Description of the skeleton of the fossil beaked whale Messapicetus gregarius: searching potential proxies for deep-diving abilities." Fossil Record 21.1 (2018): 11-32. https://doi.org/10.5194/fr-21-11-2018
Wikipedia contributors. “Beaked whale” Wikipedia, 16 Oct. 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaked_whale
Here's a painting for World Whale Day! I know I draw killer whales a lot, but they are my favorite animal, and they are a species of whale, so today was a good excuse to paint this male Norwegian orca.
I found a couple of whale toys from when I was a kid, they were in one of those little tubes full of plastic animals. I decided to give them a new paint job :)
My two favorite Odontocetes, orca and Risso's dolphin
An attempted at a size comparison of Romaleodelphis, the recently described "dolphin" from the Miocene of Austria. I couldn't find any good material of the closely related Chilcacetus, so instead based the proportions more on eurhinodelphinids, so take the size with a grain of salt.
Romaleodelphis is a recently described species from the Early Miocene Konservatlagerstätte at Pucking, Upper Austria, which preserves fauna dating to the early Miocene when much of eastern Austria was underwater. A somewhat generalized depiction of this time was actually drawn very recently by @knuppitalism-with-ue (I still got a half-written reblog of his piece sitting in my drafts). Of these animals, the giant sunfish Austromola and the loon Petralca are both from the same locality as Romaleodelphis, which sadly didn't make it in on account of having been named just a week too late.
