Catodon australis Wall 1851

Catodon australis Wall, 1851

Aust. Mus. Mem. 1: 1, plate 1. (31 December 1851).

Common name. Sperm Whale.

Current name. Physeter macrocephalus Linnaeus, 1758; following Perrin (2009c).

Holotype. PA.326 by subsequent determination. Male, skull without dentaries. The original specimen was a skull and whole skeleton. An old index card (i.e. post 1900) for PA.326 cites “parts of skeleton” which included an atlas. An unnumbered skull, previously articulated but without dentaries, matches the dimensions given by Wall and is identified here as possibly part of Wall’s original specimen that was towed into Port Jackson (Sydney harbor) on 5 December 1849 (Wall, 1851: 4).

Condition. Incomplete cranium, missing distal tip of rostrum, detached right side of rostrum (maxilla and premaxilla), some skull fractures and eroded dorsal parts of parietal bones. Dentaries and skeletal elements not yet located. Many skeletal elements of this species in the AM Collection do not have associated numbers, and it is likely that the original small metal registration number tags have disintegrated or that no numbers were ever assigned. A complete evaluation of skeletal elements and dentaries will be required to identify surviving parts of the skeleton amongst material in the collection.

Type locality. Ocean off Port Jackson, Sydney, NSW, where the carcass was found dead, floating in the open sea (Wall, 1851: 4).

Comments. Wall clearly attributes the name australis to the animal towed into Port Jackson but also mentions four other specimens in addition to the holotype during the course of his extended description. These are a lower jaw from Twofold Bay, presented by B. Boyd; a lower jaw, location not specified, presented by G. Blaxland; a few post-cranial bones of a female washed up in Botany Bay: badly decomposed, likely female; and a skull of a very young “sperm whale” washed up near Botany (Wall, 1851). Attempts to locate these have not yet been successful and some might not have survived. Although Wall referred to these specimens in his account, they are not included in the type series because he was uncertain if the observed variation between these specimens was interspecific or intraspecific. This is one of the earliest names applied to Southern Hemisphere populations; see Hershkovitz (1966) for a detailed synonymy. Tomilin (1957), cited in Perrin (2009d), applied the name Physeter catodon australis as a southern subspecies, which is regarded by Perrin (2009d) as a nomen dubium.