Sperm whale of the Society for Marine Mammalogy, the largest international association of marine mammal scientists in the world, officially uses "Physeter macrocephalus" when publishing their definitive list of marine mammal species. The sperm whale is the largest toothed whale, with adult males measuring up to long and weighing up to . By contrast, the second largest toothed whale (Baird's Beaked Whale) measures and weighs up to . The Nantucket Whaling Museum has a -long jawbone. The museum claims that this individual was long; the whale that sank the "Essex" (one of the incidents behind "Moby-Dick") was claimed to be . A
Cryptid whale presence of two long sickle-shaped flippers and a lack of throat pleats. Another report of a two finned whale of roughly the same size was recorded from the ship Lily off the coast of Scotland the following year. In 1983 between Corsica and the French mainland, French zoologist Jacques Maigret sighted a similar looking creature. Although it has not been proven to exist, it was given a "classification" by Giglioli. The whale may have been a genetic mutation. Given the species' alleged size and attributes, it is extremely doubtful such a species would not have been taken (and reported) by