Kentriodon is an extinct species of toothed whale. Fossils have been found in Europe, Asia, New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

, and the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

Kentriodon was the most diverse of all the kentriodontid

Kentriodontidae

Kentriodontidae is an extinct family of odontocet whales related to modern dolphins. The Family lived from the Oligocene to the Pliocene before going extinct.-Taxonomy:...

s, which include three named species and five undescribed species. These were small to medium-sized odontocetes with largely symmetrical skulls, and thought likely to include ancestors of some modern species. Kentriodon is also the oldest described kentriodontid genus, reported from the Late Oligocene to the Middle Miocene.

Kentriodontines ate small fish and other nectonic organisms; they are thought to have been active echolocators

Animal echolocation

Echolocation, also called biosonar, is the biological sonar used by several kinds of animals.Echolocating animals emit calls out to the environment and listen to the echoes of those calls that return from various objects near them. They use these echoes to locate and identify the objects...

, and might have formed pods. The diversity, morphology and distribution of fossils appear parallel to some modern species.