The use of is in the current sentence just feels really off to me. Either say that it is a genus, or say that it was an early amphibious cetacean, as it's highly extinct.
" the only evidence of this in the fossil record was the 52-million-year-old (fully terrestrial) Pakicetus" - Now, I could be wrong on this, because my paleontology knowledge mostly comes from books I bought at a library discard sale, and these are from the 1990s, but isn't Pakicetus at least thought by some to have been semiaquatic to some extent? Out
Pakicetus article calls it amphibious, which I'm not really convinced is the greatest assessment of scholarly consensus, but I'm not sure if fully terrestrial is the best summary of Pakicetus opinions, either.
"The end of the snout of Ambulocetus is missing," - Not wild about this phrasing. Obviously, this is based on the holotype, and Ambulocetus was more than just the holotype before its extinction, so it's not great phrasing to project the holotype onto all individuals here
"The holotype preserved 7 neck vertebrae" - It's unclear if you're meaning here that that it probably only had seven, or if only seven were recovered, and there's no telling how many there truly were.
With the lumbar and sacral vertebrae, it seems implied that it is known how many of those it had. Is that assumption correct?
"The cortical bone (the outermost layer) is thickest at the neck of the rib (between the joint and the costal cartilage), at max 1 mm (0.039 in), and are filled with spongy bone" - The subject of are appears to be the cortical bone, which is the wrong case for are, as it is singular. I'm also not convinced that the present tense is great here, as the spongy bone has since been fossilized, and is no longer really spongy bone.
"nd the fact that both the premolars and molars were both involved in crushing indicates" - Can you find a way to rephrase this so that both doesn't pop up twice?
All look reliable, and the formatting is acceptable. There's a lot of Thewissen in there, but it's unavoidable, because he was involved in the discovery of the fossil matter for this species. It's perfectly fine at this level, given the circumstances, but an FAC may challenge it.
The use of is in the current sentence just feels really off to me. Either say that it is a genus, or say that it was an early amphibious cetacean, as it's highly extinct.
" the only evidence of this in the fossil record was the 52-million-year-old (fully terrestrial) Pakicetus" - Now, I could be wrong on this, because my paleontology knowledge mostly comes from books I bought at a library discard sale, and these are from the 1990s, but isn't Pakicetus at least thought by some to have been semiaquatic to some extent? Out
Pakicetus article calls it amphibious, which I'm not really convinced is the greatest assessment of scholarly consensus, but I'm not sure if fully terrestrial is the best summary of Pakicetus opinions, either.
"The end of the snout of Ambulocetus is missing," - Not wild about this phrasing. Obviously, this is based on the holotype, and Ambulocetus was more than just the holotype before its extinction, so it's not great phrasing to project the holotype onto all individuals here
"The holotype preserved 7 neck vertebrae" - It's unclear if you're meaning here that that it probably only had seven, or if only seven were recovered, and there's no telling how many there truly were.
With the lumbar and sacral vertebrae, it seems implied that it is known how many of those it had. Is that assumption correct?
"The cortical bone (the outermost layer) is thickest at the neck of the rib (between the joint and the costal cartilage), at max 1 mm (0.039 in), and are filled with spongy bone" - The subject of are appears to be the cortical bone, which is the wrong case for are, as it is singular. I'm also not convinced that the present tense is great here, as the spongy bone has since been fossilized, and is no longer really spongy bone.
"nd the fact that both the premolars and molars were both involved in crushing indicates" - Can you find a way to rephrase this so that both doesn't pop up twice?
All look reliable, and the formatting is acceptable. There's a lot of Thewissen in there, but it's unavoidable, because he was involved in the discovery of the fossil matter for this species. It's perfectly fine at this level, given the circumstances, but an FAC may challenge it.