Caperea marginata
The pygmy right whale is a species of baleen whale. It may be a member of the cetotheres, a family of baleen whales which until 2012 were thought to be extinct; C. marginata has otherwise been considered the sole member of the family Neobalaenidae and is the only member of the genus Caperea. First described by John Edward Gray in 1846, it is the smallest of the baleen whales, ranging between 6 and 6.5 metres in length and 3,000 and 3,500 kilograms in mass. Despite its name, the pygmy right whale may have more in common with the gray whale and rorquals than the bowhead and right whales.
Dedden et al. · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- pygmy right whalePBDB
- Sits inside
- CapereaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivore, suspension feederPBDB, for Mysticeti
- Life habit
- aquaticPBDB, for Mysticeti
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Cetacea
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Mysticeti
Time the record covers
At most 12 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
12 occurrences of Caperea marginata on record, most of them in the Holocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
12 occurrences- Holocene100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Caperea marginata and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Caperea marginata and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
No other named taxon is catalogued from any of those sites.
The Paleobiology Database records 12 sites for Caperea marginata, and this reads all of them.
Entered from
2 references- Distribution of the pygmy right whale, Caperea marginata, in the Australasian region7
- The pygmy right whale Caperea marginata (Cetacea)5
Each of the 12 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Caperea marginata
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Dedden et al.
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Caperea marginata · SAMA:Mammalogy:M6110
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itCaperea through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Gray 1846)