Comments on: New Dolphin Discovered

By: Dj Plasmic Nebula

Dj Plasmic Nebula — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:27:04 +0000

Yup the picture does sorta look photoshoped for Better Quality drawing, but i think it’s the real deal.

Thanks Chris for the pictures. XD didn’t know they were real.

the last pic you posted didn’t work (collossal dolphin) didn’t work.

By: youcantryreachingme

youcantryreachingme — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:30:46 +0000

I think the photo’s genuine. The dolphin is distorted because of the angle of the photo against the water.

I wonder if the tail flukes are proportionally thinner, with a wider span, than for other bottlenose?

By: Roy3rd

Roy3rd — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:44:40 +0000

Great pics, Chris. Thanks!

By: Roy3rd

Roy3rd — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:09:50 +0000

At the risk of sounding pathologically cynical, am I the only one who thinks the photo looks “funny”? I have no reason to doubt that the discovery is real, but I wonder if this “photo” is merely an illustration of the animal or is a real photograph that has been retouched for clarity.

By: cryptidsrus

cryptidsrus — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:30:33 +0000

Generic or not, it’s still exciting to find more kinds of anything in this world. Particulalry dolphins.
We need more laughter from them in this world of ours.

By: DavidFullam

DavidFullam — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:11:43 +0000

Love how it more closely resembles Fraser’s. That’s a dolphin type I’ve always had a particular interest in.

By: dogu4

dogu4 — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:52:13 +0000

Those are great points from Mystery Man. While I wouldn’t consider my self either a “clumper” or a “splitter” when it comes to communities of species, I sure do find the emerging concepts of cladistics fascinating particularly in the cohesively structured way it presents our relatedness to other species and it looks like it’s there that scientific research will find any number of previously unknown and distinct but urecognized populations. In the case of these coastal cetaceans, let’s hope we do it before their habitat “disappears”, or more accurately gets destroyed by human impacts, something the previously-thought, seemingly-limitless coastal areas are experiencing at an accelerating rate, the likes of which have never been seen before. Think about that next time one throws another farm-raised or wild-caught shrimp on the old barbie.

By: youcantryreachingme

youcantryreachingme — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 05:29:17 +0000

Pink dolphin: http://www.twistedproduction.com/images/pink-dolphin.jpg

Orange dolphin: http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/nmml/education/images/franciscana01.jpg

Red dolphin: http://www.swimwithdolphins.co.uk/images/dolphinreef.jpg

Brown dolphin: http://isurus.mote.org/~bgriffin/program_files/image014.jpg

Black dolphin: http://www.123dolphin.com/dolphin-images/40_black_dolphin.jpg

White dolphin: http://www.wwf.org.hk/images/pressreleases/20061019-3.jpg

Blue dolphin: http://www.hitech-dolphin.com/image-files/dolphin-ocean-picture.jpg

Grey dolphin: http://z.about.com/d/cameras/1/0/z/2/Dolphin.jpg

Striped dolphin: http://www.crru.org.uk/images/striped4.jpg

Funky black and white dolphin: http://weblog.greenpeace.org/oceandefenders/images/stop_whaling2007/GJN_3142-01_dolphin.jpg

Speckled pink and grey: http://www.oceanleadership.org/sea90e/images/education/about/speckled.gif

Speckled blue and pink: http://csiwhalesalive.org/csi00013Sc.jpg

and your requested Colossal dolphin – orange belly, black on back, faded bluish pink: http://i.pbase.com/u47/baywing/upload/30106278.AtlanticWhiteSidedDolphin.jpg

Chris.

By: mystery_man

mystery_man — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:44:15 +0000

This is an exciting discovery, but it isn’t exactly finding a new large mammal since the dolphins were already well known to exist in the area. Their actual existence was not in dispute, they just hadn’t been recognized for what they really were and were thought to be the coastal dolphins. The new discovery here was at the genetic level, which I think is a quite a bit different (less spectacular for some perhaps) than if they had found a completely new large marine animal that had been eluding discovery.

Still, it is always amazing to me how in this day and age we have come to the point where we can discern the genetic differences between similar species in order to get a more accurate idea of the biodiversity of life on Earth. It seems the already sometimes fuzzy line between species is getting ever more complicated and tricky, which I feel will only help our understanding of biology. New techniques and technologies are further amending our ideas of what exactly constitutes a species and this is an exciting area for me. Of course, I am a splitter when it comes to taxonomy, so some may beg to differ.

By the way, that picture at the top is gorgeous!