mesoplodont whale
mesoplodon latin

Mesoplodont whales are fourteen species of whale in the genus Mesoplodon, making it the largest genus in the cetacean order.

Blainville's beaked whale (Mesoplodon densirostris), or the dense-beaked whale, is the widest ranging mesoplodont whale and perhaps the most documented.

Sowerby's beaked whale (Mesoplodon bidens), also known as the North Atlantic/North Sea beaked whale, was the first mesoplodont whale to be described.

The body of Cuvier's beaked whale is robust and cigar-shaped, similar to those of other beaked whales and can be difficult to distinguish from many of the mesoplodont whales at sea.

Gervais' beaked whale (Mesoplodon europaeus), sometimes known as the Antillian beaked whale, Gulf Stream beaked whale, or European beaked whale (from which its scientific name is derived) is the most frequently stranding type of mesoplodont whale off the coast of North America.

However, as this is apparently quite similar in all Mesoplodon, a number of well-founded assumptions can be made.

Only adult males seem to have teeth, and even these only two, in line with other Mesoplodon species.

However, there was a considerable debate as to whether the whale belonged in the genus 'Mesoplodon' or not.

M. peruvianus is the 13th species of Mesoplodon to be identified, as well as the smallest.

There were at least two dozen sightings of an unknown beaked whale named Mesoplodon sp.

It is presumably similar to other medium-sized Mesoplodon, which are typically deep-water species living alone or in small groups and feeding on cephalopods and small fish.

Mesoplodont whales are fourteen species of whale in the genus Mesoplodon, making it the largest genus in the cetacean order.

It is now thought to me more closely related to the Pygmy Beaked Whale (Mesoplodon peruvianus), which was only itself described in 1991.

Taken together, the specimens provide persuasive evidence of a distinct species of the genus Mesoplodon, which means "armed with a tooth in the middle of the jaw."

Three of these, 'Indopacetus', the 'Hyperoodon' and the 'Mesoplodon', are united in a single subfamily, the 'Hyperoodontinae'.

The body is fairly typical for a Mesoplodon, except it is more rotund in appearance and tapered at the ends in a sort of spindle shape.

M. peruvianus is distinguished from other species of Mesoplodon by the size and position of its teeth, its relatively tiny cranium and its overall small size.

The True's Beaked Whale (Mesoplodon mirus) is a medium sized whale in the Mesoplodont genus.

Abbreviations: 'Hector's Beaked Whale', 'Mesoplodon hectori', is a small Mesoplodont living in the Southern Hemisphere.

Longman's beaked whale (also known as the Indo-Pacific beaked whale) is also sometimes classed in the Mesoplodon genus.

The structure of the nasal area indicates Australodelphis was likely to have enlarged nasiofacial muscles similar to Mesoplodon and indicate a possible ability to generate high-frequency sounds used in echolocation.

In 1993, four Gray's Beaked Whales or Scamperdown Whales (Mesoplodon grayi) were stranded on the beach, three were eventually returned to sea but the last one died.

Reports of Tropical Beaked Whales put them at even larger length in the 7-8 meter (23-26 foot) range, which is larger than any Mesoplodon and more typical of a Bottlenose Whale.

The Maldives female had a robust body like the bottlenoses, although this may be a distortion, since the less-decomposed female specimen from Japan had a laterally compressed body typical of Mesoplodon.

On January 10, 2009, a female Sowerby's Beaked Whale (Mesoplodon Bidens) was found at the port of Fethiye on the Aegean Sea coast of Turkey, far away from her natural habitat.

The following year, 1872, the English anatomist William Henry Flower placed it in the genus Mesoplodon, while in 1873 the Scottish scientist James Hector assigned the same specimen to the species M. knoxi.

The species remained in the genus Mesoplodon until 1962, when Charles McCann, a vertebrate zoologist at the Dominion Museum in Wellington, argued that the species only represented a juvenile of Berardius arnuxi.

The genus also shows a number of similarities to the modern genus Mesoplodon, a member of the Ziphiidae family of beaked whales, possessing an elongated toothless rostrum with wide maxillary flanges and laterally compressed tympanic bulla.

Gray's beaked whale (Mesoplodon grayi), sometimes known as Haast's beaked whale, the Scamperdown whale, or the southern beaked whale, is one of the better-known members of the genus Mesoplodon.

Stejneger's beaked whale (Mesoplodon stejnegeri), sometimes known as the Bering Sea beaked whale or the Saber-toothed whale, is a poorly-known member of the genus Mesoplodon inhabiting the northern North Pacific Ocean.