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A large-scale change in ocean current and temperature could have contributed to the radiation of modern mysticetes. [38] The earlier varieties of baleen whales, or "archaeomysticetes", such as Janjucetus and Mammalodon had very little baleen and relied mainly on their teeth. [39]
The family Balaenidae, the right whales, contains two genera and four species. All right whales have no ventral grooves; a distinctive head shape with a strongly arched, narrow rostrum, bowed lower jaw; lower lips that enfold the sides and front of the rostrum; and long, narrow, elastic baleen plates (up to nine times longer than wide) with fine baleen fringes.
The narwhal and the beluga live only in the Arctic Ocean. Sowerby's beaked whale and the Clymene dolphin exist only in the Atlantic and the Pacific white-sided dolphin and the northern straight dolphin live only in the North Pacific. [citation needed] Cosmopolitan species may be found in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
Offshore deaths of multiple whales are unlikely to lead to multiple strandings, since winds and currents are variable and will scatter a group of corpses. Most carcasses never reach the coast, and are scavenged, or decompose enough to sink to the ocean bottom, where the carcass forms the basis of a unique local ecosystem called a whale fall.
Whales are fully aquatic, open-ocean animals: they can feed, mate, give birth, suckle and raise their young at sea. Whales range in size from the 2.6 metres (8.5 ft) and 135 kilograms (298 lb) dwarf sperm whale to the 29.9 metres (98 ft) and 190 tonnes (210 short tons) blue whale, which is the
The name Whippomorpha is a combination of English (wh[ale] + hippo[potamus]) and Greek (μορφή, morphē = form). [2]Some attempts have been made to rename the suborder Cetancodonta, due to the misleading utilization of the suffix -morpha for a crown group, [6] as well as the risk of confusion with the clade Hippomorpha (which consists of equid perissodactyls); [7] however Whippomorpha ...
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In the 19th-century stubby, square-rigged ships (and later barks) dominated the fleet, being sent to the Pacific (the first being the British whaleship Emilia, in 1788), [84] the Indian Ocean (1780s), and as far away as the Japan grounds (1820) and the coast of Arabia (1820s), as well as Australia (1790s) and New Zealand (1790s). [85] [86]