Every day, new species of living beings are discovered and named - although most of these are insects, frogs, or other types of relatively unknown creatures. However, what this article will describe is quite different from the usual. Instead of a small creature or bacteria, what was discovered relatively recently was a new species of whales - more specifically, a beaked whale.
Beaked whales are a family of medium-sized whales that have teeth and an extended snout. Examples of beaked whales are the Blainville’s, Berardius, Tropical bottlenose whale, and the very topic of this article, the Mesoplodon Eueu - also known as the Ramari’s beaked whale. They are possibly one of the most visible inhabitants of the deep sea due to their large body size and global habitation range, so the fact that they were just discovered is certainly surprising “The Earth’s deep ocean remains less understood than the surface of Mars,'' says Dr. Emma Carroll, and this is surely true.
The people behind this study discovered this new species when researching the taxonomic status of the True’s beaked whale (Mesoplodon mirus), a previously known species. They went to several museums and analyzed specimens, one of which washed up on shore on the 27th of November of 2011 - which was the new species. “We soon realized that the genetics and skull shape of True’s beaked whales in the northern hemisphere were very different to True’s beaked whales in the southern hemisphere,” says Dr. Emma Carroll and her colleagues.
Overall what can be taken from all this information is that the deep ocean of earth is still incredibly mysterious, and if animals as large as whales can go unnoticed then who knows what could be lurking beneath the surface...
Image Source: Espaço Talassa
Comments