Saturday, December 22, 2007

24 Hours: Spade-toothed Whale (Mesoplodon traversii)


Whale, whale, whale, what have we here? It's a whale skull! Neil requested this spade-toothed whale, giving me its Latin name and apology. Turns out, no one's ever seen this animal. All we know of it is what we can gather from three skull parts that have washed up over the past 130 years or so. It's pretty amazing that there are still so many mammals—big ones!—that we've never seen, even though we think we've seen it all and know it all.

So Neil, I'm sorry your mammal has no skin, but I think this drawing is in the spirit of your request.

If you want to learn more about this mysterious whale, you can start with Wikipedia.

4 comments:

David Lee Gold said...

Jennifer, I must say - drawing that mammal shows your remarkable artistic skull!

Ted Slampyak said...

Now now, let's not get a head of ourselves...

Neil said...

Perfect!

Jennifer Rae Atkins said...

I'm so relieved, Neil! I was worried you'd be disappointed. I actually tried to draw the whole whale but for whatever reason it wasn't working at that time.