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Fossil remains of Cetacea are known globally from nearshore marine sediments along continental coastlines, but they are poorly known from volcanic oceanic island archipelagos. Here we report Pleistocene fossil cetacean material from late Neogene and Quaternary age outcrops on the Santa Maria Island of the Azores island archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean. These remains consist of an isolated and highly worn fragment from the mandible of a medium-to large-sized baleen-bearing mysticete (i.e., Chaeomysticeti), which was exposed at the marine isotope stage 5 (sub-stage MIS 5e) level at Praia do Calhau, after Hurricane Gordon hit Santa Maria Island in August 2012. While this occurrence represents only the second description of Pleistocene cetaceans from volcanic oceanic islands, we predict that fossil cetaceans are likely underreported from oceanic islands, given their extant abundance and richness near oceanic island archipelagos today, whose geomorphology and oceanography provide important settings for the migration and life history patterns of living cetaceans.
Ávila et al. (Thu,) studied this question.