Researchers name new whale species after mythic creature from Moby-Dick

Whale in sperm family named 'albicetus', meaning white whale, after whale in Herman Melville's novel after 15m-year-old fossil is re-examined

Researchers have identified a new species of whale that they are naming after the mythic beast of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.

In a study published on Wednesday in the journal Plos One, lead researcher Alex Boersma corrected a 90-year-old error and created a new branch of the sperm whale family tree for the fossil. She and co-author Nicholas Pyenson, the Smithsonian's curator of marine mammal fossils, named the genus "albicetus", meaning white whale.