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This list currently includes only fossil genera and species. However, the Atlantic population of gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) became extinct in the 18th century, and the baiji (or Chinese river dolphin, Lipotes vexillifer) was declared "functionally extinct" after an expedition in late 2006 failed to find any in the Yangtze River.
The traditional hypothesis of cetacean evolution, first proposed by Van Valen in 1966, [9] was that whales were related to the mesonychians, an extinct order of carnivorous ungulates (hoofed animals) that resembled wolves with hooves and were a sister group of the artiodactyls (even-toed ungulates). This hypothesis was proposed due to ...
The pygmy right whale shares several characteristics with the right whales, with the exception of having a dorsal fin. Also, pygmy right whales' heads are no more than one quarter the size of their bodies, whereas the right whales' heads are about one-third the size of their bodies. [11] The pygmy right whale is the only extant member of its ...
It was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site [2] in July 2005 [3] for its hundreds of fossils of some of the earliest forms of whale, the archaeoceti (a now extinct sub-order of whales). The site reveals evidence for the explanation of one of the greatest mysteries of the evolution of whales : the emergence of the whale as an ocean-going ...
A researcher fires a biopsy dart at an orca.The dart will remove a small piece of the whale's skin and bounce harmlessly off the animal. Cetology (from Greek κῆτος, kētos, "whale"; and -λογία, -logia) or whalelore (also known as whaleology) is the branch of marine mammal science that studies the approximately eighty species of whales, dolphins, and porpoises in the scientific ...
A San Diego-based ecotour operator has captured stunning aerial footage, perhaps first of its kind, showing Cuvier’s beaked whales swimming along the surface. Rare footage shows elusive ...
The whale's scientific name is Eubalaena glacialis, which means "good, or true, whale of the ice". The cladogram is a tool for visualizing and comparing the evolutionary relationships between taxa. The point where a node branches off is analogous to an evolutionary branching – the diagram can be read left-to-right, much like a timeline.
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