#odontoceti

Beneziphius cetariensis was an early beaked whale that lived off the coast of what is now the northwest Iberian peninsula.

It's only known from a partial skull that was fished up by bottom trawling nets from the seafloor, so its exact age isn't known, but based on related species it's estimated to date to somewhere between the mid-Miocene and early Pliocene, around 13-5 million years ago.

About 4m long (~13'), it had a fairly short narrow snout and was functionally toothless, with evidence of only small vestigial teeth that would have been fully embedded in its gums. Males of this species probably had a pair of tusk-like "battle teeth" at the tip of their lower jaw, similar to some other beaked whales, which would have been used in fights against each other.

The back of Beneziphius' skull was also proportionally tall, and although not as elaborate as some other fossil species this may still have functioned like "internal antlers" — display structures visible only via echolocation.

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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 :)

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.