Ginkgo-toothed beaked whale
species of mammal
The ginkgo-toothed beaked whale (Mesoplodon ginkgodens) is a poorly known species of beaked whale named for the unusual shape of its dual teeth. It is a fairly typical-looking species, but is notable for males not having any scarring.
Description
Ginkgo-toothed beaked whales are more robust than most mesoplodonts, but otherwise look fairly typical. Halfway through the jaw, there is a sharp curve up where the ginkgo leaf-shaped tooth is.
Unlike other species such as Blainville's beaked whale and Andrews' beaked whale, the teeth do not arch over the rostrum. The beak itself is of a moderate length.
The coloration is overall dark gray on males with light patches on the front half of the beak and around the head, and small white spots on the bottom of the tail, but the location may be variable. Females are a lighter gray and have countershading.
Both sexes reach 5.3 metres (17 feet) in length. They are around 2–2.5 metres (6.6–8.2 feet) long when born.
“Ginkgo-toothed beaked whale” enters the record as species of mammal. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ginkgo-toothed, beaked and whale can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q281459. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ginkgo-toothed beaked whale” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.