Hector's Beaked Whale - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

The English taxonomist John Edward Gray first named the species Berardius hectori in 1871, based on a specimen (a 2.82 m male) collected in Titahi Bay, New Zealand in January, 1866. The following year, 1872, the English anatomist William Henry Flower placed it in the genus Mesoplodon, while in 1873 the Scottish scientist James Hector assigned the same specimen to the species M. knoxi. The species remained in the genus Mesoplodon until 1962, when Charles McCann, a vertebrate zoologist at the Dominion Museum in Wellington, argued that the species only represented a juvenile of Berardius arnuxi. The beaked whale specialist Joseph Curtis Moore (1968) and J. G. B. Ross (1970) contested this designation, arguing that M. hectori was a valid species. Adult male specimens from the 1970s and 1980s confirmed the species' specific status.