A SHEPHERD'S BEAKED WHALE, TASMACETUS SHEPHERD!,FROM THE EASTERN SOUTH PACIFICROBERT L. BROWNELL, JR.
Department of Vertebrate Zoology, National Museum of Natural History,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C.

ANELIO AGUAYO L.
Section for Vertebrate Zoology, Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm

AND
DANIEL TORRES N.
Departamento Ciencias Naturales y Exactas, Sede Santiago Sur,
Universidad de Chile, Santiago

W.R.B. Oliver (1937) described a new genus and species of beaked whale (Family:Ziphiidae) from a carcass found stranded on the coast of North Island (Ohawe,Taranaki), New Zealand. Since the holotype was described only six additional
records of this species have been described: five from the New Zealand region
and a sixth from Peninsula Valdez, Province of Chubut, Argentina (Mead andPayne, 1975). We report here a new record from the eastern South Pacific.
A cranium, left mandible, and cervical vertebrae were found by Aguayoand Torres just south of Loberia Vieja (see Figure 2 in Aguayo et al., 1971)
on the eastern coast (ea. 33°46'S, 80°47'W) of Isla Mas Afuera (Alejandro Selkirk
Island), Juan Fernandez Archipelago, Chile, 19 February 1970. The specimen
was not collected, but was photographed. These photographs are on file at theDivision of Mammals, Smithsonian Institution. It was identified as T. shepherdi
by comparing these photographs with those published by Oliver (1937) andMoore (1968). The photographs also agree with the specimen of T. shepherdi
in the U.S. National Museum (No. 484878). The characters of the vertex andthe numerous alveoli are clear in the photographs and leave no question about
the identity of the specimen. The skull length of the new specimen, with partof its rostrum damaged, is estimated at 100 cm. We estimate that the original
condylobasal and mandible lengths were 125 cm and 107 cm respectively. Thisspecimen, with no reference, was one of the eight records of T. shepherdi
recorded in Anonymous (1975: 897). The Isla Mas Afuera and Peninsula Valdez
specimens suggest that T. shepherdi may have a circumpolar distribution in theSouthern temperate oceans, as do many other species of cetaceans (Brownell,1974).
We thank JG. Mead for reviewing our manuscript.

.Sci. Rep. Whales Res. Inst.,No. 28, 1976, 127-128.

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BROWNELL, AGUAYO AND TORRESREFERENCES
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BROWNELL, R.L.JR., 1974. Small odontocetes of the Antarctic. In: V.C. Bushnell [ed.], Antarctic Map Folio Series, Folio 18, Am. Geogr. Soc., New York, pp. 13-19.
MEAD, J.G., and R.S. PAY!'IE, 1975. A specimen of the Tasman beaked whale, Tasmacetus shepherdi, from Argentina. J. Mammal., 56: 213-218.
MOORE, J.C., 1968. Relationships among the living genera of beaked whales, with classifications,diagnoses and keys. Fieldiana: Zoology, 53 : 209-298.
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Sci. Rep. Whales Res. Inst.,
No. 28, 1976.