Balaenoptera

Balaenoptera
Temporal range: Neogene–recent
Fin whale
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Infraorder: Cetacea
Family: Balaenopteridae
Genus: Balaenoptera
Lacépède, 1758
Type species
Balaenoptera gibbar [1]
Linnaeus, 1758
Species

See text

Balaenoptera (from Latin balaena 'whale' and Ancient Greek πτερά (pterá) 'fin') is a genus of rorquals containing eight extant species.[2] Balaenoptera comprises all but two of the extant species in its family (the humpback whale and gray whale); the genus is currently polyphyletic, with the two aforementioned species being phylogenetically nested within it.[3]

This genus is known in the fossil records from the Neogene to the Quaternary (13.65 million years ago to the present).[4]

Fossil of Balaenoptera acutorostrata cuvieri from the Pliocene of Italy
  1. ^ Wilson, D. E.; Reeder, D. M., eds. (2005). Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3rd ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-8221-0. OCLC 62265494.
  2. ^ "List of marine mammal species and subspecies". Society for Marine Mammalogy. May 2020. Archived from the original on July 14, 2020. Retrieved July 20, 2020.
  3. ^ McGowen, Michael R; Tsagkogeorga, Georgia; Álvarez-Carretero, Sandra; dos Reis, Mario; Struebig, Monika; Deaville, Robert; Jepson, Paul D; Jarman, Simon; Polanowski, Andrea; Morin, Phillip A; Rossiter, Stephen J (2019-10-21). "Phylogenomic Resolution of the Cetacean Tree of Life Using Target Sequence Capture". Systematic Biology. 69 (3): 479–501. doi:10.1093/sysbio/syz068. ISSN 1063-5157. PMC 7164366. PMID 31633766.
  4. ^ "Balaenoptera". Fossilworks.