Spade-toothed whale
| Spade-toothed whale | |
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| Size compared to an average human | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Artiodactyla |
| Infraorder: | Cetacea |
| Family: | Ziphiidae |
| Genus: | Mesoplodon |
| Species: | M. traversii |
| Binomial name | |
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Mesoplodon traversii (Gray, 1874) |
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| Locations and dates of specimens | |
| Synonyms | |
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Dolichodon layardii Gray, 1874 |
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Dolichodon layardii Gray, 1874
Mesoplodon bahamondi Reyes, van Waerebeek, Cárdenas and Yáñez, 1995
The spade-toothed whale (Mesoplodon traversii) is a very little-known and the rarest species of beaked whale. It was first named from a partial jaw found on Pitt Island, New Zealand, in 1872; reported and illustrated in 1873 by James Hector, and described the next year by John Edward Gray, who named it in honor of Henry Hammersley Travers, the collector. This was eventually lumped with the strap-toothed whale, starting as early as an 1878 article by Hector, who never considered the specimen to be specifically distinct. A calvaria found in the 1950s at White Island, also New Zealand, initially remained undescribed, but was later believed to be from a ginkgo-toothed beaked whale.
In 1986, a damaged calvaria was found washed up on Robinson Crusoe Island, Chile, and was described as a new species, Mesoplodon bahamondi or Bahamonde's beaked whale.
In December 2010, two specimens, a cow and calf, were found stranded on Opape Beach, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand. They were originally identified as Gray's beaked whale, but later genetic analysis revealed that they represented the first complete specimens of the spade-toothed whale. Following this find, a report describing the spade-toothed whale and an analysis of their DNA later appeared in the 6 November 2012 issue of the journal Current Biology.
The results of DNA sequence and morphological comparisons have shown all three finds came from the same species, which is therefore properly known as M. traversii. The external appearance was only described in 2012, and it is likely to be the most poorly known large mammalian species of modern times.
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