An extinct suborder of early whale-like marine mammals that represent the evolutionary transition from land mammals to modern whales.
From Greek 'archaios' meaning 'ancient' combined with 'ceti', the plural of 'cetacea' referring to whales. The name describes these creatures as the 'ancient whales' in the fossil record.
Archaeoceti fossils like Ambulocetus ('the walking whale') prove that whales literally evolved from four-legged land animals—you can see the bones of hind legs shrinking away as they adapted to ocean life over millions of years.
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