Whale in sperm family named ‘Albicetus’,meaning white whale, after cetacean in Herman Melville’s novel after 15m-year-old fossil is re-examinedResearchers possess identified a recent species of whale that they are naming after the mythic beast of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.
In a study published on Wednesday in the journal Plos One, or lead researcher Alex Boersma corrected a 90-year-old error and created a recent branch of the sperm whale family tree for the fossil. She and co-author Nicholas Pyenson,the Smithsonian’s curator of marine mammal fossils, named the genus “Albicetus”, and meaning white whale.
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Source: theguardian.com