Cetotheriidae is an extinct

Extinction

In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...

 family of baleen

Baleen

Baleen or whalebone is a filter-feeder system inside the mouths of baleen whales. The baleen system works when a whale opens its mouth underwater and then water pours into the whale's mouth. The whale then pushes the water out, and animals such as krill are filtered by the baleen and remain as food...

 whale

Whale

Whale is the common name for various marine mammals of the order Cetacea. The term whale sometimes refers to all cetaceans, but more often it excludes dolphins and porpoises, which belong to suborder Odontoceti . This suborder also includes the sperm whale, killer whale, pilot whale, and beluga...

s in the suborder Mysticeti. The family existed from the Late Oligocene to the Late Pliocene before going extinct.

Taxonomy

Since its description by Brant in 1872, Cetotheriidae was used as a wastebasket taxon for baleen whales which were not assignable to extant whale families. Starting in the early 2000's a number of studies on the phylogeny has reduced the included genera down to thirteen in two subfamilies.

Cetotheriidae (Brandt, 1872)

• Subfamily Cetotheriinae Whitmore and Barnes, 2008
  • Cetotherium
    Cetotherium
    Cetotherium is a genus of the extinct cetaceans from the family Cetotheriidae .-Known species:...
    
    Brandt 1843
  • Heterocetus Capellini 1877
  • Hibacetus Otsuka and Ota 2008
  • Joumocetus
    Joumocetus
    Joumocetus is an extinct baleen whale genus in the family Cetotheriidae and containing the single species Joumocetus shimizui. The species is known only from a partial skeleton found in Miocene age sediments of Japan....
    
    Kimura and Hasegawa 2010
  • Mixocetus Kellogg 1934
  • Palaeobalaena Moreno 1882
  • Piscobalaena Pilleri and Siber 1989
  • Plesiocetopsis (Brandt 1873)
  • Titanocetus Bisconti 2006
• Subfamily Herpetocetinae Steeman, 2007
  • Cephalotropis Cope 1896
  • Herpetocetus Van Beneden 1872
  • Metopocetus Cope 1896
  • Nannocetus Kellogg 1929