Whale (Megaptera) skeleton in the Galerie d'Anatomie Comparée et de Paléontologie, Jardin des Plantes, Paris September 2008
This is a skeleton of a Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaeangliae).
There are many species of Megaptera described in the literature, but the genus is currently
considered to be monotypic, that is, to consist of only one speces.
See Clapham, Phillip J., and James G. Mead (1999) Megaptera novaeangliae.
Mammalian Species No. 604. pp. 1-9. Published 5 May 1999
by the American Society of Mammalogists.
The caption for the specimen in the Galerie reads as follows:
Ce squelette de baleine à fanons fut collecté par le voyageur-
naturaliste Delalande sur une plage d’Afrique du sud où cette baleine s’était
échouée, en juin 1819. Le squelette fut décrit par Cuvier en
1823 sous le nom de rorqual du Cap et constitue ainsi le type de cette espèce.
which translates as:
This baleen whale skeleton was collected by the traveller and naturalist Delalande on a South African beach where the whale was stranded in June 1819. The skeleton was
described by Cuvier in 1823 under the name of Cape Whale and so is
the type specimen of this species.
Delalande is Pierre-Antoine Delalande (1787-1823), one of several voyaguer-
naturalists sent out by the Jardin du Roi and the Muséeum d'histoire naturelle
to explore and bring back specimens. The voyage during which he collected this
specimen went first to the coast of Brazil and then to South Africa. He was an
assistant to Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, another famous palaeontologist.
Cuvier is Baron Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), one of the foremost anatomists and
palaeontologists of his day. The Rorqual du Cap described by Cuvier is now subsumed
into the species Megaptera novaeangliae and is not recognized as a distinct species.
See Laissus, Yves (1981) Les voyageurs naturalistes du Jardin
du roi et du Muséeum d'histoire naturelle: essai de portrait-robot.
Revue d'histoire des sciences 34(3-4):259-317.
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