Tasmacetus shepherdi
Shepherd's beaked whale, also commonly called Tasman's beaked whale or simply the Tasman whale, is a cetacean of the family Ziphiidae and the only species in the genus Tasmacetus. The whale has not been studied extensively. Only four confirmed at sea sightings have been made and 42 strandings recorded. It was first known to science in 1937, being named by W. R. B. Oliver after George Shepherd, curator of the Wanganui Museum, who collected the type specimen near Ohawe on the south Taranaki coast of New Zealand's North Island, in 1933.
Shaun Lee · 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
- Shepherd's beaked whalePBDB
- Sits inside
- TasmacetusPBDB
- Diet
- piscivore, carnivorePBDB, for Ziphiidae
- Life habit
- aquatic, depth=surfacePBDB, for Cetacea
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Cetacea
- Environment
- marine,freshwaterPBDB, for Odontoceti
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.
8 occurrences of Tasmacetus shepherdi 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
8 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.
Tasmacetus shepherdi and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Tasmacetus shepherdi 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 8 sites for Tasmacetus shepherdi, and this reads all of them.
Entered from
3 references- A mass stranding of cetaceans caused by naval sonar in the Bahamas4
- Shepherd's beaked whale (Tasmacetus shepherdi): Information on appearance and biology based on strandings and at-sea observations3
- Catalog of Living Whales1
Each of the 8 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 Tasmacetus shepherdi
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Shaun Lee
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Structured light scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Tasmacetus shepherdi · SAMA:Mammalogy:M12774
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 itTasmacetus through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Oliver 1937