SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM
Bulletin 73
AN ACCOUNT OF THE BEAKED WHALES OF THE FAMILY ZIPHIIDÆ IN THE COLLECTION OF THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM, WITH REMARKS ON SOME SPECIMENS IN OTHER AMERICAN MUSEUMS
BY
FREDERICK W. TRUE
Head Curator, Department of Biology, U. S. National Museum
WASHINGTON
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
1910
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM
Issued September 28, 1910.
ADVERTISEMENT.
The scientific publications of the United States National Museum consist oftwo series, the Proceedings and the Bulletins.
The Proceedings, the first volume of which was issued in 1878, are intendedprimarily as a medium for the publication of original, and usually brief, papersbased on the collections of the National Museum, presenting newly-acquired factsin zoology, geology, and anthropology, including descriptions of new forms ofanimals, and revisions of limited groups. One or two volumes are issued annuallyand distributed to libraries and scientific organizations. A limited number ofcopies of each paper, in pamphlet form, is distributed to specialists and othersinterested in the different subjects as soon as printed. The date of publication isprinted on each paper, and these dates are also recorded in the tables of contentsof the volume.
The Bulletins, the first of which was issued in 1875, consist of a series of separatepublications comprising chiefly monographs of large zoological groups and othergeneral systematic treatises (occasionally in several volumes), faunal works, reportsof expeditions, and catalogues of type-specimens, special collections, etc. Themajority of the volumes are octavos, but a quarto size has been adopted in a fewinstances in which large plates were regarded as indispensable.
Since 1902 a series of octavo volumes containing papers relating to the botanicalcollections of the Museum, and known as the Contributions from the National Herbarium,has been published as bulletins.
The present work forms No. 73 of the Bulletin series.
Richard Rathbun,
Assistant Secretary, Smithsonian Institution,
In charge of the United States National Museum.
Washington, D. C., June 1, 1910.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
- Page.
- Introduction 1
- Descriptions of skulls and skeletons of Ziphioid whales 3
- Genus Mesoplodon 3
- Mesoplodon bidens 4
- densirostris 9
- europæus 11