Whales, Dolphins & Porpoises

Chapter one Understanding Whales, Dolphins & Porpoises The world of Whales, Dolphins & Porpoises Whales, dolphins & porpoises belong to a single group of marine mammals  known as the cetaceans. A tool of 81 different species are currently recognized by whale experts although, as research progress, new ones of are still being discovered. A strange skull, for example, was found in the Juan Fernandez Islands, off the coast of Chile, in June 1986. After nearly a decade of painstaking examination and scientific discussion, a team of whale experts finally concluded that this discovery was to science. It was named Bahamonde’s  beaked whale in 1996, making it the most recent cetacean species to be formally recognized. Although believed to be a living species, no live representatives of this whale have yet been seen. Meanwhile, a number of other cetaceans species have been split in recent years. In 1995, for example, the common dolphin was officially separated into ...