文章来源: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/07/new-whale-species
Like many good mysteries, this one started with a corpse, but the body in question was 24 feet (7.3 meters) long.
像许多好的奥秘一样，这一个从尸体开始，但身体长24英尺（7.3米）。
The remains floated ashore in June of 2014, in the Pribilof Islands community of St. George, a tiny oasis of rock and grass in the middle of Alaska's Bering Sea. A young biology teacher spotted the carcass half-buried in sand on a desolate windswept beach. He alerted a former fur seal researcher who presumed, at first, that she knew what they'd found: a Baird's beaked whale, a large, gray, deep-diving creature that occasionally washes in dead with the tide.
这些遗骸于2014年6月在阿拉斯加白令海中部的圣乔治普里比洛夫群岛社区上岸，这是一片小小的岩石和草地绿洲。 一位年轻的生物老师在一片荒凉的海风沙滩上发现了半埋在沙子里的尸体。 他警告了一位前海豹研究员，他一开始就认为她知道他们发现了什么：一只贝尔德的喙鲸，一种大而灰色，深潜的生物，偶尔会在潮水中死去。
But a closer examination later showed that the flesh was too dark, the dorsal fin too big and floppy. The animal was too short to be an adult, but its teeth were worn and yellowed with age.
但仔细检查后发现肉体太暗，背鳍太大而且松软。 动物太短而不能成年，但它的牙齿随着年龄的增长而磨损并变黄。
It turns out, according to new research published Tuesday, that this was not a Baird's beaked whale at all, but an entirely new species—a smaller, odd-shaped black cetacean that Japanese fishermen have long called karasu, or raven.
根据周二公布的最新研究结果，事实证明，这根本不是贝尔德的喙鲸，而是一种全新的物种 - 一种较小的，形状奇特的黑鲸鱼，日本渔民长期以来称之为karasu或乌鸦。
"We don't know how many there are, where they're typically found, anything," says Phillip Morin, a molecular geneticist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Southwest Fisheries Science Center. "But we're going to start looking.”
美国国家海洋和大气管理局西南渔业科学中心的分子遗传学家Phillip Morin说：“我们不知道它们有多少，它们通常被发现在哪里。” “但我们会开始寻找。”
It’s rare to uncover a new species of whale. Advances in DNA research have helped scientists identify five new cetaceans in the past 15 years but two were dolphins and most were simple category splits between fairly similar species. This animal, in the genus Berardius, looks far different than its nearest relative and inhabits an area of the North Pacific where marine mammal research has been conducted for decades.
发现一种新的鲸鱼很少见。 DNA研究的进展帮助科学家确定了过去15年中五种新的鲸目动物，但其中两种是海豚，大多数是相当相似物种之间的简单类别分裂。 这种动物在Berardius属中看起来与其最近的亲属大不相同，栖息于北太平洋地区，在那里进行了数十年的海洋哺乳动物研究。
"It's a really big deal," says study co-author Paul Wade of NOAA's National Marine Mammal Laboratory. "If you think about it, on land, discovery of new species of large mammals is exceptionally rare. It just doesn't happen very often. It's quite remarkable.”
“这是一个非常重要的事情，”NOAA国家海洋哺乳动物实验室的共同作者Paul Wade说。 “如果你想一想，在陆地上，发现新的大型哺乳动物种类是非常罕见的。它不会经常发生。这是非常了不起的。”
SKELETONS, BEAKS, AND BONE POWDER
Morin and his team examined the St. George carcass, took bone powder from old museum specimens, and reviewed DNA tests of whales from the Sea of Okhotsk. They studied skulls and beaks and analyzed records from whaling fleets in Japan. They even tracked down a skeleton hanging from the ceiling in a high school gymnasium in the Aleutian Islands.
骨骼，贝克和骨粉
Morin和他的团队检查了圣乔治尸体，从旧博物馆标本中取出骨粉，并回顾了鄂霍次克海的鲸鱼的DNA测试。 他们研究了头骨和喙，并分析了日本捕鲸船队的记录。 他们甚至在阿留申群岛的一所高中体育馆追踪悬挂在天花板上的骨架。
The scientists conclude in their study published in Marine Mammal Science that this type of whale, which has not yet been named, is nearly as far removed genetically from the Northern Hemisphere's Baird's beaked whales as it is from its closest known relative, Arnoux's beaked whales, which swim in the Antarctic Ocean. The differences, in fact, are so dramatic that the animal has to be something else, they say.
科学家们在他们的海洋哺乳动物科学研究报告中得出结论，这种尚未命名的鲸鱼与北半球的贝尔德喙鲸基本上相距甚远，因为它来自最近的已知亲戚Arnoux的喙鲸， 在南极海洋游泳。 事实上，这些差异是如此戏剧性，以至于动物必须是别的东西，他们说。
"It's just so exciting to think that in 2016 we're still discovering things in our world—even mammals that are more than 20 feet long," Morin says.
“我觉得2016年我们仍在发现世界上的东西 - 甚至超过20英尺长的哺乳动物，这真是令人兴奋，”莫林说。
He is not alone in his enthusiasm. Robert Pitman serves on a taxonomy committee for the Society for Marine Mammalogy, which publishes an annual list of all recognized marine mammal species. He is not among the 16 co-authors on Morin's paper. But at a time when the diversity of marine mammals is shrinking—the Yangtze River dolphin is now functionally extinct and Mexico’s vaquita porpoise is dangerously close—Pitman calls the discovery "heartening."
"It boggles my mind to think that a large, very different-looking whale has gone unnoticed by the scientific community for so long," Pitman says. "It sends a clear message about how little we know about what is in the ocean around us."
他的热情并不孤单。 罗伯特皮特曼是海洋哺乳动物学会的分类委员会成员，该委员会每年都会公布所有公认的海洋哺乳动物物种。 他并不是莫林论文的16位共同作者之一。 但是当海洋哺乳动物的多样性正在缩小时 - 长江豚现在已经灭绝，而且墨西哥的小海豚在危险的情况下非常接近 - 皮特曼称这一发现“令人振奋”。
“令人难以置信的是，科学界长期以来一直认为看不见大型，非常不同的鲸鱼，”皮特曼说。 “它发出了一个明确的信息，即我们对周围海洋中的物质知之甚少。”
The discovery also raises new questions about how well humans are understanding the threats posed by marine activities, from energy exploration to sonar use, given that so few people even knew such a creature existed.
这一发现还提出了一个新的问题，即人类如何理解海洋活动所构成的威胁，从能量探索到声纳使用，因为很少有人知道这样的生物存在。
AN UNRECOGNIZABLE, BAFFLING CREATURE
Of the 88 recognized living cetacean species, including orcas and humpbacks, bottlenose dolphins and Dall's porpoises, 22 are beaked whales. The largest of those, Baird's beaked whales, also called giant bottlenose whales, can reach 35 to 40 feet (10.7 to 12 meters) and weigh more than 24,000 pounds (10,900 kilograms). They travel in large groups, may dive 3,000 feet (914 meters), and can be underwater for an hour. While beaked whales are still hunted in Japan, little about them is known. In part that’s because they spend so much time feeding and exploring vast, deep canyons far from shore.
一个不可识别的，折叠的创作
在88种公认的生活鲸类物种中，包括逆戟鲸和座头鲸，宽吻海豚和达尔的海豚，其中22只是喙鲸。 其中最大的是贝尔德的喙鲸，也被称为巨型宽吻鲸，可以达到35至40英尺（10.7至12米），体重超过24,000磅（10,900公斤）。 他们大群旅行，可能潜水3000英尺（914米），可以在水下一小时。 虽然在日本仍然狩猎喙鲸，但对它们知之甚少。 在某种程度上，这是因为他们花了很多时间喂养和探索远离海岸的广阔深邃的峡谷。
When Christian Hagenlocher on St. George, a 35-square-mile (91-square-kilometer) island inhabited by 100 people, frequented by hundreds of thousands of seals, and visited by 2.5 million birds, pointed out the dead whale in Zapadni Bay to former seal researcher Karin Holser, she thought it was a Baird's beaked whale. But later, as tides and currents revealed more of the animal, Holser realized she didn't recognize it at all. She consulted a colleague's cetacean identification book and sent pictures to other experts in Alaska.
当Christian Hagenlocher在圣乔治，一个35平方英里（91平方公里）的岛屿上居住着100人，经常有成千上万的海豹，并有250万只鸟儿参观，指出Zapadni湾的死鲸 对前印章研究员Karin Holser来说，她认为这是一只贝尔德的喙鲸。 但后来，由于潮汐和潮流揭示了更多的动物，霍尔意识到她根本没有认出它。 她咨询了一位同事的鲸鱼鉴定书，并将照片发给了阿拉斯加的其他专家。
"This dorsal fin was larger, further aft, and had more curvature than that of a Baird's beaked whale," says independent ecologist Michelle Ridgway, who arrived on the island days later. "The jaw structure and the shape of the melon were not quite right, either.” And this whale, while clearly an adult, was just two-thirds the size of full-grown Baird’s beaked whales.
“这个背鳍比贝尔德的喙鲸更大，更向后，弯曲度更大，”独立生态学家米歇尔里奇韦说，他几天后抵达岛上。 “颚结构和甜瓜的形状也不是很正确。”而这条鲸鱼虽然显然是一只成年人，但它只是成年贝尔德喙鲸的三分之二。
Holser and other island residents measured the whale. Ridgway collected tissue, arranging to ship the slightly fetid samples through intermediaries to Morin's lab in Southern California.
Morin was intrigued.
Holser和其他岛屿居民测量了鲸鱼。 Ridgway收集组织，安排通过中间人将略微恶臭的样品运送到南加州的Morin实验室。
莫琳很好奇。
SO MYSTERIOUS IT'S 'ALMOST FOLKLORE'
Just nine months earlier, he'd spied new research by Japanese scientists attempting to describe differences between Baird's beaked whales and a rare black form that whalers had whispered about since the 1940s. Groups of these smaller whales were sometime spotted in Japan’s Nemuro Strait, but only between April and June. There was no record of scientists ever seeing one alive.
太神奇了，几乎是'FOLKLORE'
就在九个月之前，他发现了日本科学家的一项新研究，试图描述贝尔德的喙鲸与捕鲸者自20世纪40年代以来一直低声说出的罕见黑色形态之间的差异。 这些小型鲸鱼的群体有时在日本的根室海峡被发现，但仅在4月至6月之间。 没有科学家看到过一个活着的记录。
"They're almost folklore," Morin says.
The Japanese scientists had speculated in fall of 2013 that this may be an unknown species of beaked whale. But they were forced to draw conclusions from DNA taken from just three of the creatures that had stranded off Hokkaido. They concluded more evidence was needed.
“他们几乎是民间传说，”莫林说。
日本科学家在2013年秋季推测这可能是一种未知的喙鲸。 但是他们被迫从三个从北海道搁浅的生物中取出的DNA得出结论。 他们得出结论需要更多证据。
Even before receiving the samples from St. George, Morin had been trying to hunt down more specimens.
He went through NOAA's tissue collection, pulling all 50 or so that had previously been identified as a Baird's beaked whale. Using DNA testing he found that two were actually a closer genetic match to the small black whales tested by Japanese scientists in 2013. One of those was from a whale that washed ashore in 2004 and now hangs in a school gym in Dutch Harbor. Scientists there had long assumed it was a younger Baird's beaked whale.
甚至在收到圣乔治的样本之前，莫林一直试图追捕更多的标本。
他经历了NOAA的组织收集，拉动了之前被确定为贝尔德喙鲸的50个左右。 利用DNA测试，他发现其中两个实际上是与日本科学家在2013年测试的小型黑鲸的基因匹配。其中一个来自于2004年在岸上冲刷的鲸鱼，现在挂在荷兰港的学校体育馆。 那里的科学家们早就认为这是一只年轻的贝尔德喙鲸。
Morin also took the suggestion of one of the Japanese scientists, who had identified a skeleton from 1948 with an unusual shaped head at the Smithsonian Institution. And he tracked down another skeleton from the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History with body measurements that suggested they were the small black form. Morin took bone powder from both, and tested their DNA. They, too, were a match for karasu.
Along with the whale from St. George, Morin now had found five new specimens that were similar to the three found in Japan.
莫林还接受了一位日本科学家的建议，他们在1948年发现了史密森学会的一个不寻常形状的头骨。 他追踪了洛杉矶郡自然历史博物馆的另一个骨架，测量结果显示它们是小黑色形状。 Morin从两者中取出骨粉，并测试了他们的DNA。 他们也是karasu的比赛。
与圣乔治的鲸鱼一起，莫林现在发现了五个与日本发现的三个相似的新标本。
To describe a new species, however, "you build up lines of evidence, but that's very hard with an animal we've never seen alive," Morin says. But body measurements between Baird's beaked whales and the smaller black creature proved vastly different, as did their DNA.
Baird's beaked whales range throughout the North Pacific from Russia and Japan to Mexico. Genetic variation among Baird’s beaked whales was tiny. But for the five new black specimens Morin tested, all initially from the Bering Sea or the Aleutians, the sequences differed from the Baird's beaked whales significantly.
然而，为了描述一个新物种，“你建立了证据线，但对于我们从未见过的动物来说，这是非常困难的，”莫林说。 但贝尔德的喙鲸和较小的黑色生物之间的身体测量证明了它们的DNA差别很大。
贝尔德的喙鲸在整个北太平洋从俄罗斯和日本到墨西哥。 贝尔德喙鲸的遗传变异很小。 但是对于Morin测试的五个新的黑色标本，最初都来自白令海或阿留申群岛，其序列与贝尔德的喙鲸显着不同。
"The genetic variation within the forms was little, while the divergence between them was much larger," Morin says. "That's our strongest argument.”
The whale still needs to be formally described and named, and Morin's findings would have to be accepted by outside experts who track cetacean taxonomy. But Pitman and others say the case is strong that it’s a new species.
“形式内的遗传变异很小，而它们之间的差异要大得多，”莫林说。 “这是我们最强烈的争论。”
鲸鱼仍需要正式描述和命名，Morin的研究结果必须由追踪鲸类分类学的外部专家接受。 但是皮特曼和其他人说这个案子非常强大，它是一个新物种。
"We're doing increasing damage to our environment, and we can't even begin to conserve the biodiversity we know is out there," Morin says. "Yet there's so much more about our world we don't even understand."
“我们正在对环境造成越来越大的破坏，我们甚至无法开始保护我们所知道的生物多样性，”莫林说。 “然而，我们甚至不了解我们的世界。”