First European pontoporiid dolphins (Mammalia: Cetacea, Odontoceti) from the Miocene of Belgium and The Netherlands

The description of two new partial skulls from the southern margin of the North Sea Basin, one from Antwerp, Belgium and the other from the Late Miocene of Neede, the Netherlands, allows a revision of the systematic affinities of the short-beaked dolphin species Protophocaena minima. The small species is placed in the family Pontoporiidae, subfamily Brachydelphininae. This new attribution greatly widens the paleogeographical distribution of the family, so far only known by cranial material from South America, and suggests that pontoporiid short-beaked taxa were probably more oceanic than long-beaked taxa such as the extant coastal to river species Pontoporia blainvillei. Several isolated periotics from Antwerp are also identified as belonging to pontoporiids.