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Stranded spade-toothed beaked whales in New Zealand in 2010
Citation
Thompson, K., C.S. Baker, A. van Helden, S. Patel, C. Millar and R. Constantine. 2012. The world's rarest whale. Current Biology. 22: 905-906. https://marineinfo.org/id/dataset/4255

Access data
Availability: Creative Commons License This dataset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Description
The vast expanses of the South Pacific Ocean have, until recently, concealed the identity of the world's rarest whale, the spade-toothed beaked whale (Mesoplodon traversii). Based on the scarcity of records and the total absence of previous sightings, this species is the least known species of whale and one of the world’s rarest living mammals. Two individuals of this species, previously known from only two skull fragments and a mandible, were recently discovered beachcast in New Zealand. Although initially misidentified, we have used DNA analysis to reveal their true identity. We provide the first morphological description and images of this enigmatic species. This study highlights the importance of DNA typing and reference collections for the identification of rare species.

Scope
Keywords:
Marine/Coastal

Contributors
University of Bristol; School of Biological Sciences, moredata creator
University of Auckland, more

Related datasets
Published in:
OBIS-SEAMAP: Spatial Ecological Analysis of Megavertebrate Populations, more

Publication
Based on this dataset
Thompson, K. et al. (2012). The world's rarest whale. Curr. Biol. 22(21): R905-R906. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2012.08.055, more

URLs

Dataset status: Completed
Data type: Data
Metadatarecord created: 2013-06-26
Information last updated: 2014-06-04
All data in the Integrated Marine Information System (IMIS) is subject to the VLIZ privacy policy