Humpback Whale - Wikipedia

The humpback was first identified as baleine de la Nouvelle Angleterre by Mathurin Jacques Brisson in his Regnum Animale of 1756. In 1781, Georg Heinrich Borowski described the species, converting Brisson's name to its Latin equivalent, Balaena novaeangliae. In 1804, Bernard Germain de Lacépède renamed it B. jubartes. In 1846, John Edward Gray created the genus Megaptera, classifying the humpback as Megaptera longipinna, but in 1932, Remington Kellogg reverted the species name to use Borowski's novaeangliae.[6] The common name is derived from the curving of the whales' backs when diving. The genus name, Megaptera, from the Ancient Greek mega- μεγα ("giant") and ptera πτερα ("wing"),[7] refer to their large front flippers. The species name means "New Englander" and was probably given by Brisson due to regular sightings of humpbacks off the coast of New England.[6]

Humpback whales are rorquals, members of the family Balaenopteridae, which includes the blue, fin, Bryde's, sei, and minke whales. A 2018 genomic analysis estimated that rorquals diverged from other baleen whales in the late Miocene, between 10.5 and 7.5 million years ago. The humpback and fin whales were found to be sister taxa (see the phylogenetic tree below).[2] There is reference to a humpback–blue whale hybrid in the South Pacific, attributed to marine biologist Michael Poole.[8][9]

Modern humpback whale populations originated in the southern hemisphere around 880,000 years ago and colonized the northern hemisphere 200,000 to 50,000 years ago. A 2014 genetic study suggested that the separate populations in the North Atlantic, North Pacific, and Southern Oceans have had limited gene flow and are distinct enough to be subspecies, with the scientific names of M. n. novaeangliae, M. n. kuzira, and M. n. australis, respectively.[10] A non-migratory population in the Arabian Sea has been isolated for 70,000 years.[11]