Pakicetidae ("Pakistani whales") is an extinct mammalian family of carnivorous cetaceans that lived during the Early Eocene to Middle Eocene (55.8 mya—40.4 mya) Indo-Pakistan and existed for approximately 15.4 million years. Modern whales evolved from archaic whales such as basilosaurids, which in turn evolved from something like the amphibious ambulocetids, which themselves evolved from something like the land-dwelling pakicetids. All species are known only from a few sites in northern Pakistan, hence the name of the family, in a region which was coastal to the Tethys Sea when the pakicetids lived.