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Whale, dolphin, or porpoise? A meaningful question about meaningless terms
Boesse posted a topic in General Fossil Discussion
Hey all - in discussing my recent research on the new extinct dolphin Ankylorhiza with science journalists, I was reminded of previous frustrations from earlier discussions with students, museum visitors, fossil collectors, journalists, and even other scientists about the meaning of the words whale, dolphin, and porpoise. Some disagreements were on this forum, others were on facebook fossil groups - the whole notion of "that's not a dolphin tooth that's a whale tooth" or vice versa is plagued by the fact that these terms have multiple established meanings and are imprecise, leading to lots of confusion, to the point where I pretty much have to start every discussion off with "there are two groups of cetaceans living today..." - many, for example, are confused about toothed baleen whales existing if only odontocetes have teeth. One thing I tried was to conduct a twitter poll showing four modern species and asking if people thought they were a whale, dolphin, or porpoise - and the majority was right only half the time: a leaping beaked whale was thought to be a dolphin, and a small dolphin was thought to be a porpoise. I've had so many discussions on here and have had to repeat some of these arguments ad nauseam, so I thought I might as well crystallize my thoughts into a blog post. I hope you enjoy it! http://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2020/07/whale-dolphin-or-porpoise-meaningful.html- 18 replies
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