Report of the Workshop on Age Estimation in Monodontids

Abstract

The workshop was a 2-day event organised immediately before the Society for Marine Mammalogy biennial conference in Tampa. NAMMCO funding enabled participation of 4 invited experts and also supported the organization and logistics associated with the workshop. The breadth and depth of the workshop presentations made it clear that most issues concerning monodontid age estimation are not unique. Many researchers investigating many taxa have considered a diversity of methods and tissues to reveal biological records of age. Aside from the biological materials, accuracy and precision of the counts or metric have been considered, as well as their interpretation.

Keywords

• aging, monodontids, belugas, narwhals, dentition