Tethys Research Institute north-western Mediterranean, within the waters of the Pelagos Sanctuary for Mediterranean Marine Mammals. This ongoing project focuses on the ecology and conservation of the cetacean fauna occurring in the area, which includes the fin whale ("Balaenoptera physalus"), the sperm whale ("Physeter macrocephalus"), the long-finned pilot whale ("Globicephala melas"), the Risso’s dolphin ("Grampus griseus"), the Cuvier's beaked whale ("Ziphius cavirostris"), the striped dolphin ("Stenella coeruleoalba"), the common bottlenose dolphin and, to a lesser extent, the short-beaked common dolphin ("Delphinus delphis"). The study area extends over about 24,000 km encompassing coastal, slope and deep pelagic waters between continental Italy, France and the
Buru (legendary creature) a large Komodo dragon-like monitor lizard, and there are fossils of such a creature to be found in the Indian subcontinent. Heuvelmans notes similar reported creatures from Western India under the name of "jhoors" where they seem to merge into the Iranian traditional dragon or ahi (Azi Dahaka), which in Iranian art is basically a local stylistic adaptation of the Chinese dragon. George Eberhart notes rumors of a similar creature in the Tigris marshes of Iraq, called the afa, possibly the same thing as ahi. Heuvelmans also notes in his checklist of unknown animals that similar reports to the buru