Instead, the species, all part of a group called rorquals, have evolved more into a network, sharing large segments of DNA with even distant cousins.
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Working in South Africa, Patagonia, and off both coasts of the United States, the researchers affixed the device to several species of rorquals, including humpback whales, blue whales, and minke whales.
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The North Atlantic right whales and bowhead whales split from the other baleens about 28 million years ago; among the rorquals, minke whales seem to have begun diverging more than 10 million years ago; and the blue and sei whales split from the remaining around five million years ago, the study found.
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The primitive morphology of the jaw suggests that Archaebalaenoptera probably was not capable of ram feeding like living rorquals and humpback whales.
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Several distinguishing characteristics can be seen in the skull of Diunatans, including a large occipital condyle and very small nasal bones compared to other rorquals. The tympanic bulla, which encapsulates the middle ear, is also large. Diunatans is the only known fossil rorqual from the North Sea. Many other fossil rorquals have been described, but all are now considered nomina dubia.
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Protororqualus is a genus of extinct rorqual from the late Pliocene (Piacenzian, ) of Mount Pulgnasco, Italy (: paleocoordinates ). The analysis made by identified Protororqualus as a late representative of the rorquals which survived in the Mediterranean at least until the late Pliocene. This would indicate that the Mediterranean basin played a vital role in preserving primitive rorquals while more derived forms established themselves in other oceans.
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Rorquals have been confirmed to return into Bohol Sea which is a rare trend in any Asian waters, and most notably Bohol regions host even blue whales.
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They use a suction technique, aided by a pair of grooves on the underside of their head, not unlike the throat pleats on the rorquals, to feed.
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Skeleton The gray whale is traditionally placed as the only living species in its genus and family, Eschrichtius and Eschrichtiidae,The Paleobiology Database Eschrichtiidae entry accessed on 26 December 2010 but an extinct species was discovered and placed in the genus in 2017, the Akishima whale (E. akishimaensis). Some recent DNA analyses have suggested that certain rorquals of the family Balaenopteridae, such as the humpback whale, Megaptera novaeangliae, and fin whale, Balaenoptera physalus, are more closely related to the gray whale than they are to some other rorquals, such as the minke whales. But other recent studies place gray whales as being outside the rorqual clade, but as the closest relatives to the rorquals. John Edward Gray placed it in its own genus in 1865, naming it in honour of physician and zoologist Daniel Frederik Eschricht.
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Each plate is made of fingernail-like keratin, which is bordered by a fringe of very fine, short, curly, wool-like white bristles. The sei's very fine baleen bristles, about are the most reliable characteristic that distinguishes it from other rorquals. The sei whale looks very similar to other large rorquals, especially its smaller relative the Bryde's whale. The best way to distinguish between it and Bryde's whale, apart from differences in baleen plates, is by the presence of lateral ridges on the dorsal surface of the Bryde's whale's rostrum.
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Omura's whale is among the smallest of the rorquals – only the two species of minke whale, the common and Antarctic, which reach in length, respectively, are smaller.Horwood, Joseph. (1990). Biology and exploitation of the minke whale. CRC Press.
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However, with the 1870 introduction of his improved harpoon design, and powered ships, larger rorquals could be chased and killed off Norway's shores with new and deadly efficiency. By the 1880s, there were twenty whaling companies operating out of Norway.
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However, around August, giant petrels return to feed on emperor penguin chicks. Some marine animals are equally present despite the negative temperature of the water. Among rare visitors to the archipelago, there are other species of penguins, orcas, and rorquals.
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Sei whales are rorquals (family Balaenopteridae), baleen whales that include the humpback whale, the blue whale, Bryde's whale, the fin whale, and the minke whale. Rorquals take their name from the Norwegian word røyrkval, meaning "furrow whale", because family members have a series of longitudinal pleats or grooves on the anterior half of their ventral surface. Balaenopterids diverged from the other families of suborder Mysticeti, also called the whalebone whales, as long ago as the middle Miocene. Little is known about when members of the various families in the Mysticeti, including the Balaenopteridae, diverged from each other.
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Modern baleen whales, Balaenopteridae (rorquals and humpback whale, Megaptera novaengliae), Balaenidae (right whales), Eschrichtiidae (gray whale, Eschrictius robustus), and Neobalaenidae (pygmy right whale, Caperea marginata) all have derived characteristics presently unknown in any cetothere and vice versa (such as a sagittal crest).
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This close association leads Demere and Berta to hypothesize that Aetiocetus displays an ancient ontogeny, or growth sequence. These nutrient foramina are also present on A. cotylalveus and another related aetiocetid, Chonecetus goedertorum. Compared to other edentulous, or toothless, mysticetes, the pattern of nutrient foramina is most similar to extant balaenopterids (blue whales and other rorquals) and fossil cetotheres.
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Miobalaenoptera is distinguished from other rorquals (both extinct and extant) in the features of the earbone (incl. periotic) as well strongly diverging basioccipital crestsYoshihiro Tanaka & Mahito Watanabe (2019): An early and new member of Balaenopteridae from the upper Miocene of Hokkaido, Japan. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology DOI: 10.1080/14772019.2018.1532968 The holotype specimen was found in marine deposits in Numata town, Hokkaido, Japan.
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While diving, the animals reduce their oxygen consumption by lowering the heart activity and blood circulation; individual organs receive no oxygen during this time. Some rorquals can dive for up to 40 minutes, sperm whales between 60 and 90 minutes and bottlenose whales for two hours. Diving depths average about . Species such as sperm whales can dive to , although more commonly .
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The Mount Pulgnasco specimen represents an early rorqual that fed differently from modern species. Compared to the laterally bowed dentaries of the latter, its dentary is more straight, which should have made it impossible to perform the intermittent ram feeding seen in modern rorquals. Another primitive character is that the anterior border of the supraoccipital is triangular and pointed like in Miocene Cetotheriidae.
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Balaenopterids are the rorquals. These animals, along with the cetotheriids, rely on their throat pleats to gulp large amounts of water while feeding. The throat pleats extend from the mouth to the navel and allow the mouth to expand to a large volume for more efficient capture of the small animals they feed on. Balaenopterids consist of two genera and eight species.
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Size comparison of selected giant sauropod dinosaurs The sauropods' most defining characteristic was their size. Even the dwarf sauropods (perhaps 5 to 6 metres, or 20 feet long) were counted among the largest animals in their ecosystem. Their only real competitors in terms of size are the rorquals, such as the blue whale. But, unlike whales, sauropods were primarily terrestrial animals.
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Modern humpback whales ram feeding. Unlike living rorquals, Plesiobalaenoptera was probably not capable of ram feeding. During ram feeding, modern whales swim toward their prey with open mouths and engulf them in an expandable throat. Plesiobalaenoptera has a postcoronoid fossa, or hole in the dentary bone of the lower jaw, which would have made this method of feeding difficult to perform.
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Nikaido, M., F. Matsuno, H. Hamilton, R. L. Brownell, Jr., Y. Cao, W. Ding, Z. Zuoyan, A. M. Shedlock, R. E. Fordyce, M. Hasegawa, and N. Okada. 2001. Retroposon analysis of major cetacean lineages: the monophyly of toothed whales and the paraphyly of river dolphins. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences 98: 7384–7389. In their review of extant and fossil rorquals, Demere et al.
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In 1855, while cruising south of Iceland in the 441-ton Hannibal, he was able to kill a "sulphurbottom" (blue whale) with a Brown's bomb gun.Schmitt et al. Thomas Welcome Roys, America's pioneer of modern whaling (1980), p.66. He realized that if he had a better way to dispatch such large rorquals as the sulphurbottom that he could easily fill his ship's hold with whale oil.
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A specimen from the Late Pliocene of northern Italy, named "Cetotherium" gastaldii by and renamed "Balaenoptera" gastaldii by , was identified as a basal eschrichtiid by who recombined it to Eschrichtioides gastaldii. found that the gray whale is phylogenetically distinct from rorquals and that previous morphological studies were correct in the conclusion that the evolution of gulp feeding was a single event in the rorqual lineage.
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Whale ribs loosely articulate with their thoracic vertebrae at the proximal end, but do not form a rigid rib cage. This adaptation allows the chest to compress during deep dives as the pressure increases. Mysticetes consist of four families: rorquals (balaenopterids), cetotheriids, right whales (balaenids), and grey whales (eschrichtiids). The main difference between each family of mysticete is in their feeding adaptations and subsequent behaviour.
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That is to say it was higher up in the food chain. Fossil evidence indicates that megalodon preyed upon many cetacean species, such as dolphins, small whales, cetotheres, squalodontids (shark toothed dolphins), sperm whales, bowhead whales, and rorquals. In addition to this, they also targeted seals, sirenians, and sea turtles. The shark was an opportunist and piscivorous, and it would have also gone after smaller fish and other sharks.
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Sei is the Norwegian word for pollock, also referred to as coalfish, a close relative of codfish. Sei whales appeared off the coast of Norway at the same time as the pollock, both coming to feed on the abundant plankton. The specific name is the Latin word borealis, meaning northern. In the Pacific, the whale has been called the Japan finner; "finner" was a common term used to refer to rorquals.
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"Right Whales and Flamingos: Convergent Evolution on a Grand Scale?". p.36-42. Johns Hopkins University Press. Retrieved on September 06, 2017 Balaenids are also robustly built by comparison with the rorquals, and lack the grooves along the throat that are distinctive of those animals. They have exceptionally large heads in comparison with their bodies, reaching 40% of the total length in the case of the bowhead whale.
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The type species, Protorqualus cuvierii, was originally described in 1829 as a species of Balaena, but later transferred to the Belgian genus Plesiocetus.; Following synonymy of Plesiocetus with Balaenoptera, B. cuvieri was considered a species of Balaenoptera,; ; ; although some authors treated it as a species of Cetotherium. Later work, however, showed that the Mount Pulgnasco skeleton was generically distinct from other fossil and extant rorquals to warrant its own genus.
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Plesiobalaenoptera fossils have been found in sediments of the Stirone River in northern Italy. Plesiobalaenoptera was similar in appearance to other rorquals, although it had a relatively wider rostrum than other whales. The genus has several distinguishing features mainly seen in the region of the ear. For example, the periotic bone (which surrounds the inner ear) has a raised central portion and a triangular projection at its front.
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Numerous species of both migrating and non-migrating birds—many endangered—take refuge in the marshes and green areas of Licola. Most notably, the heron has returned to the area, while on the beaches there have been sightings of loggerhead sea turtles. The seabed along the Licola-Cumae beach, between the island of Ischia and Ventotene, contains a submarine canyon, the Canyon of Cumae, which provides a home for cetaceans such as dolphins and rorquals.
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Balaenoptera, from ('whale') and ('fin'), is a genus of Balaenopteridae, the rorquals, and contains eight extant species. The species Balaenoptera omurai was published in 2003. Balaenoptera is a diverse genus and comprises all but one of the extant species in its family—the other species is the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae). This genus is known in the fossil records from the Neogene to the Quaternary (age range: from 13.65 million years ago to the present).
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Diunatans is considered to be a stem balaenopterid because it falls outside the Balaenoptera+Megaptera clade, which includes all living rorquals. Its name means "long-distance swimmer", from the Latin diu meaning "long time" or "long distance", and natans, meaning "swimming." The type species is D. luctoretemergo, named after the motto of Zeeland, "Luctor et Emergo" (Latin for "I struggle and I emerge"). Diunatans was around the size of the living minke whale.
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Rorquals torpedoes also damaged the Italian auxiliary cruiser Piero Foscari, unsuccessfully attacked an Italian submarine and the Italian merchant Securitas, and sunk two Greek sailing vessels with gunfire. In August 1940 she attacked an Italian convoy, missing the Italian merchants Verace and Doris Ursino with torpedoes. Following this failed attack Rorqual was heavily depth charged by the Italian torpedo boat Generale Achille Papa. In January 1941 Rorqual attacked the tug Ursus and a floating battery mounted on a lighter.
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In the 1850s, the Euro–American whalemen began a serious attempt at catching rorquals such as the blue whale and fin whale. In the 1860s Captain Thomas Welcome Roys invented a rocket harpoon, making a significant contribution to the development of the California whaling industry. In 1877, John Nelson Fletcher, a pyrotechnist, and a former Confederate soldier, Robert L. Suits, modified Roys's rocket, marketing it as the "California Whaling Rocket". The rocket was highly effective in killing whales.
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Small depressions on the upper jaw each contain a lone stiff hair, but are only visible on close inspection. Its head's ventral surface lacks the numerous prominent furrows of the related rorquals, instead bearing two to five shallow furrows on the throat's underside. The gray whale also lacks a dorsal fin, instead bearing 6 to 12 dorsal crenulations ("knuckles"), which are raised bumps on the midline of its rear quarter, leading to the flukes. This is known as the dorsal ridge.
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After his rockets were rebuilt, Roys and his crew set out in the Visionary, with whaleboats in tow astern, to search for rorquals. Once a whale was sighted, the crews went to their respective boats, and if a whale was successfully captured, they'd heave the carcass to the surface with a steam winch, fasten it to the side of the ship, and tow it back to Seydisfjordur. For the 1865 season they took twenty or more whales, but also lost another twenty.
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Retrieved on 2013-03-22. Other abundant animals of the region include walrus, narwhal, harp seal, bearded seal, ringed seal, bowhead whale, rorquals and polar bear. All aquatic mammals crucially depend on the availability of open water; they have very limited ability to maintain breathing holes in ice and are all vulnerable to attacks by the polar bear when breathing at the holes. The seals and walrus occupy areas of fast ice, which is essential for giving birth and raising the pups.
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The common minke whale or northern minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) is a species of minke whale within the suborder of baleen whales. It is the smallest species of the rorquals and the second smallest species of baleen whale. Although first ignored by whalers due to its small size and low oil yield, it began to be exploited by various countries beginning in the early 20th century. As other species declined larger numbers of common minke whales were caught, largely for their meat.
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Whales played a major part in shaping the art forms of many coastal civilizations, such as the Norse, with some dating to the Stone Age. Petroglyphs off a cliff face in Bangudae, South Korea show 300 depictions of various animals, a third of which are whales. Some show particular detail in which there are throat pleats, typical of rorquals. These petroglyphs show these people, of around 7,000 to 3,500 B.C.E. in South Korea, had a very high dependency on whales.
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A humpback whale straining water through its baleen after lunging. Rorquals feed on plankton by a technique called lunge feeding. Lunge feeding could be regarded as a kind of inverted suction feeding, during which a whale takes a huge gulp of water, which is then filtered through the baleen. Biomechanically this is a unique and extreme feeding method, for which the animal at first must accelerate to gain enough momentum to fold its elastic throat (buccal cavity) around the volume of water to be swallowed.
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The mammalian brain regulates body temperature and the circulatory system, including the four-chambered heart. The mammals include the largest animals on the planet, the rorquals and some other whales, as well as some of the most intelligent, such as elephants, some primates and some cetaceans. The basic body type is a four-legged land-borne animal, but some mammals are adapted for life at sea, in the air, in the trees, or on two legs. The largest group of mammals, the placentals, have a placenta which feeds the offspring during pregnancy.
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Limnology and Oceanography. 45. 300-308.Tedesco, K. and Thunell, R., (2003) Seasonal and interannual variations in planktonic foraminiferal flux and assemblage composition in the Cariaco Basin, Venezuela. Journal of Foraminiferal Research 33, 192-210. The waters are home to varieties of marine lives including whales (such as rorquals and humpback),en el golfo de cariaco ballena en el golfo de cariaco. Retrieved on April 16, 2017Swartz L. S.. Cole T.. McDonald A.M.. Hildebrand A. J.. Oleson M. E.. Martínez A.. Clapham J.P.. Barlow J.. Jones L. M.. 2003.
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Location of Aristotle Mountains on the Antarctic Peninsula. Mount Rorqual () is a peak between Starbuck and Stubb Glaciers in southeastern Aristotle Mountains, 5 nautical miles (9 km) west of Mount Queequeg, on the east side of Graham Land. The feature is rocky and precipitous, rises to 1,110 m and is separated from Cachalot Peak by a narrow ridge. The name is one of a group in the area applied by United Kingdom Antarctic Place-Names Committee (UK-APC) that reflects a whaling theme, the Rorquals being a species of baleen whales.
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Kaliszewska, Z. A.J. SegerV. Rowntreeet al2005Population histories of right whales (Cetacea: Eubalaena) inferred from mitochondrial sequence diversities and divergences of their whale lice (Amphipoda: Cyamus)Molecular Ecology1434393456 Based on morphology and molecular data, four extant family-level clades are recognized within Mysticeti: Balaenidae (bowhead and right whales), Neobalaenidae (pygmy right whales), Eschirichtiidae (gray whales), and Balaenopteridae (rorquals). Phylogenetic relationships of the mysticeti order remain unclear due to legal and logistical challenges. However, recent morphological analysis, support Balaenidae as a monophyletic group that is the sister group to Neobalaenidae.
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Some individuals have become trapped in the ice and were forced to overwinter in the Antarctic – for example, up to 120 "lesser rorquals" were trapped in a small breathing hole with sixty killer whales and an Arnoux's beaked whale in Prince Gustav Channel, east of the Antarctic Peninsula and west of James Ross Island, in August 1955.Taylor, R. J. F. (1957). "An unusual record of three species of whale being restricted to pools in Antarctic sea-ice". In Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 129 (3): 325-331 (abstract only).
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A number of 18th century authorsE.g. ; ; described the gray whale as Balaena gibbosa, the "whale with six bosses", apparently based on a brief note by : The gray whale was first described as a distinct species by based on a subfossil found in the brackish Baltic Sea, apparently a specimen from the now extinct north Atlantic population. Lilljeborg, however, identified it as "Balaenoptera robusta", a species of rorqual. realized that the rib and scapula of the specimen was different from those of any known rorquals, and therefore erected a new genus for it, Eschrichtius.
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By doing so, he removed much of the danger from whaling although it remained a very dangerous undertaking. His invention increased the efficiency by which whales could be captured and made it possible to hunt the larger and faster rorquals, the largest group of baleen whales.Whaling, 1861-1987, (New Bedford Whaling Museum) Svend Foyn introduced mechanized, steam-powered catcher boats equipped with bow-chaser deck cannons and heavy-caliber harpoons that exploded on impact. Foyn constructed his 86-ton, seven-knot Spes et Fides, the first steam-powered whale catcher.
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The sea hosts more than 700 species of invertebrates, about 60 species of fish, and five species of marine mammals, including friendly beluga, the white whale. Several other dolphin species, such as harbour porpoises, appear less frequently while larger whales such as bowhead, humpbackДень кита. and rorquals, northern bottlenose, orcas have been considered as rare visitors to the watersFilatov N., Pozdnyakov D., Johannessen M.O.,, Pettersson H.L.,, Bobylev P.L., 2005, White Sea: Its Marine Environment and Ecosystem Dynamics Influenced by Global Change, pp.174, Praxis Publishing, Springer, retrieved on 06-05-2014 while actual frequency of occurrences within White Sea basin is not specified.
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The lunge feeding technique of rorquals appears to be more energy efficient than the ram feeding of balaenid whales; the latter technique is used with less dense and patchy plankton. The cooling trend in Earth's recent history may have generated more localities of high plankton abundance via wind-driven upwellings, facilitating the evolution of gigantic whales. Cetaceans are not the only marine mammals to reach tremendous sizes. The largest carnivorans of all time are marine pinnipeds, the largest of which is the southern elephant seal, which can reach 6 meters in length and weigh up to .
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Balaenids are large whales, with an average adult length of 15 to 17 metres (45–50 feet), and weighing 50-80 tonnes. Their principle distinguishing feature is their narrow, arched, upper jaw, which gives the animals a deeply curved jawline. This shape allows for especially long baleen plates. The animals utilise these by ram feeding, swimming at or near the surface with their mouth open for minutes at a time, and straining food from the water, which they then scrape off the baleen with their tongues – a feeding method that contrasts with those of the rorquals and the gray whale.
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They are light gray or white ventrally and bordered by dark gray. The baleen plates, which number about 230 to 360 pairs and average about , are creamy white with a fine white fringe – a small percentage in the western North Pacific (mainly larger individuals) have a thin black band along the outer margin. They possess 50 to 70 thin ventral pleats, which only extend about 47 percent of the body length – among the shortest relative to body length among the rorquals, second only to the sei whale.Dorsey, E. M., Stern, S. J., Hoelzel, A. R., and Jacobsen, J. (1990).
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It was designed with a harpoon gun mounted at its bow and was fast enough to chase and catch rorquals such as the fin whale. At first, whale catchers either brought the whales they killed to a whaling station, a settlement ashore where the carcasse could be processed, or to its factory ship anchored in a sheltered bay or inlet. With the later development of the slipway at the ship's stern, whale catchers were able to transfer their catch to factory ships operating in the open sea. Previous to that was the whaleship of the 16th to early 20th centuries, driven first by sail and then by steam.
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Whale oil, which fossil-fuel based alternatives has supplanted, is no longer the primary commercial product of whaling. Whaling is now done for whale meat for the relatively small culinary market. (Norwegian whalers account for about 20% of whales caught and Japanese whalers for about 60%.) Harpoon cannons, fired from harpoon ships with displacement in the hundreds of tons, are now universally used for commercial whaling operations. These motorized ships are able to keep up with the sleeker and fast-swimming rorquals such as the fin whale, that would have been impossible for the muscle-powered rowboats to chase, and allow whaling to be done more safely for the crews.
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As the right whale swims, a front gap between the two rows of baleen plates lets the water in together with the prey, while the baleens filter out the water. Rorquals such as the blue whale, in contrast, have smaller heads, are fast swimmers with short and broad baleen plates. To catch prey, they widely open their lower jaw — almost 90° — swim through a swarm gulping, while lowering their tongue so that the head's ventral grooves expand and vastly increase the amount of water taken in. Baleen whales typically eat krill in polar or subpolar waters during summers, but can also take schooling fish, especially in the Northern Hemisphere.
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The two parvorders of whales, baleen whales (Mysticeti) and toothed whales (Odontoceti), are thought to have split apart around 34 million years ago. Whales consist of eight extant families: Balaenopteridae (the rorquals), Balaenidae (right whales), Cetotheriidae (the pygmy right whale), Eschrichtiidae (the grey whale), Monodontidae (belugas and narwhals), Physeteridae (the sperm whale), Kogiidae (the dwarf and pygmy sperm whale), and Ziphiidae (the beaked whales). Whales are fully aquatic, open ocean creatures, and feed, mate, give birth, suckle and raise their young at sea. Whales range in size from the and dwarf sperm whale to the and blue whale, which is the largest known creature that has ever lived.
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Blue whales are rorquals, in the family Balaenopteridae whose extant members include the fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus), sei whale (Balaenoptera borealis), Bryde’s whale (Balaenoptera brydei), Eden's whale (Balaenoptera edeni), common minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata), Antarctic minke whale (Balaenoptera bonaerensis), Omura's whale (Balaenoptera omurai), and humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae). Molecular evidence places blue whales in the Superorder Cetartiodactyla, which includes the Orders Cetacea (under which blue whales are classified) and Artiodactyla, even-toed ungulates. This classification is supported by evidence of morphological homology between cetaceans and artiodactyls in two described archaic whales. The phylogeny of the blue whales is still debated because their placement varies depending on the molecular markers and phylogenetic analysis used.
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The three feet long head and its dentaries had no signs of either teeth nor tooth sockets. Cortesi noted that at that time few naturalists could assign cetacean fossils to individual species, and he therefore never named his specimen. thought the "Baleine de Cortesi" represented a distinctive species because it was a very small adult individual and because the curvature of the maxillary branches was less convex than in any other known whale. Other French naturalists; named it "Le rorqual de Cortési"; arguing that both Cortesi's fossil whales ("rorqual de Cortési" and "de Cuvier") were closely related to extant rorquals and the only difference between them was the much smaller size of the former.
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Artistic impression of two Eobalaenoptera pursued by the giant shark Carcharocles megalodon Eobalaenoptera was first described in June 2004 by researchers at the Virginia Museum of Natural History from a partial skeleton found in 1990 in Caroline County, Virginia, the site of a prehistoric ocean, in the middle Miocene Calvert Formation. The 11 m (35 ft) skeleton proved to have similar morphological characteristics to a clade of whales consisting of two modern taxonomic families – Balaenopteridae (the rorquals), and Eschrichtiidae (a family with one surviving species, the gray whale). The age of the Calvert Formation (14 million years) makes Eobalaenoptera the oldest known member of Balaenopteroidea by three to five million years. It also considerably narrowed the gap between the earliest known fossil record and estimated time of divergence of this clade from other baleen whales.
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Skeleton of the Common minke whale Minke whale in the Saguenay–St. Lawrence Marine Park, showing the blowholes and dorsal fin at the same time Minke whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence showing scars perhaps caused by killer whales The common minke whale is the smallest of the rorquals, and one of the smallest baleen whales (second smallest only to the Pygmy right whale). In the North Atlantic, Norwegian whaling vessels in 1940 allegedly caught individuals of up to in length, but they were likely only measured visually in comparison to objects of known dimensions aboard the ships themselves – the longest caught in subsequent years were typically only up to in length. In the North Pacific, Soviet vessels operating out of the Kuril Islands claimed to have caught two males of 12.2 (40 ft) and and a female of – the first two were landed in 1951, the third in 1960.
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