The two-meter skull of a newly discovered species of giant ichthyosaur, the earliest known, is shedding new light on the marine reptiles' rapid growth into behemoths of the Dinosaurian oceans, and helping us better understand ...
Evolution
Dec 23, 2021
0
2592
Long before whales, the oceans of Earth were roamed by a very different kind of air-breathing leviathan. Snaggle-toothed ichthyosaurs larger than school buses swam at the top of the Triassic Period ocean food chain, or so ...
Earth Sciences
Oct 10, 2011
66
2
Scientists at the University of Liverpool have shed new light on how diving mammals, such as the sperm whale, have evolved to survive for long periods underwater without breathing.
Plants & Animals
Jun 13, 2013
0
0
When a killer whale slowly circled back toward wildlife photographer Brian Skerry in the middle of the ocean after discarding the giant sting ray it was devouring, panic is not what came to mind: "Part of my brain is thinking, ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 21, 2021
0
1159
Sperm and northern bottlenose whales were frequently observed following a trawler off the coast of Newfoundland to feed on fish escaping from the net as it was hauled in, according to a study published August 23, 2023 in ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 23, 2023
1
127
(AP) -- Scientists have discovered an ancient whale whose bite ripped huge chunks of flesh out of other whales about 12 million years ago - and they've named it after the author of "Moby Dick."
Archaeology
Jun 30, 2010
2
0
"Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part," wrote Herman Melville in Moby Dick. Today, we no longer dread whales, but their subtlety remains. "For ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 3, 2014
0
6
When walking along the beach, some objects might seem unusual because they are neither pebble nor shell nor seaweed. They can be covered with a soft white layer that looks a bit like cotton wool. They may appear hard or waxy, ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 18, 2016
0
35
A 15 million year-old fossil sperm whale specimen from California belongs to a new genus, according to a study published December 9, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Alexandra Boersma and Nicholas Pyenson from ...
Archaeology
Dec 9, 2015
1
675
A team of researchers from Denmark, the U.K. and Ireland has identified the origin of ambergris. In their paper published in the journal Biology Letters, the group describes analyzing DNA sequences from ambergris samples ...
Physeteroidea Kogiidae
The sperm whale family, or sperm whales, is a common name for the family Physeteridae or superfamily Physeteroidea. The three existing species of whale are the Sperm Whale, in the genus Physeter, and the Pygmy Sperm Whale and Dwarf Sperm Whale, in the genus Kogia. In the past these genera have sometimes been united in the single family, Physeteridae, with the two Kogia species in a subfamily (Kogiinae), however recent practice is to allocate the genus Kogia to its own family, Kogiidae, leaving Physeteridae as a monotypic (single extant species) family, although additional fossil representatives of both families are known (see "Evolution"). The name Sperm Whale comes from sailors of whaling boats who thought that the spermaceti on the whales head was actual sperm from the reproductive system.
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