South Asian River Dolphin: Species of freshwater or river dolphin
The South Asian river dolphin (Platanista gangetica) is a freshwater or river dolphin found in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan.
| South Asian river dolphin | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Ganges river dolphin leaping out of the water | |
 | |
| Size compared to an average human | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Artiodactyla |
| Infraorder: | Cetacea |
| Family: | Platanistidae |
| Genus: | Platanista Wagler, 1830 |
| Species: | P. gangetica |
| Binomial name | |
| Platanista gangetica (Lebeck, 1801); (Roxburgh, 1801) | |
| Subspecies | |
| Platanista gangetica gangetica | |
 | |
| Ranges of the Ganges river dolphin and of the Indus river dolphin | |
It is split into two subspecies, the Ganges river dolphin (P. g. gangetica) and Indus river dolphin (P. g. minor).
From the 1970s until 1998, they were regarded as separate species; however, in 1998, their classification was changed from two separate species to subspecies of a single species. The idea was to wait until genetic analysis had decided how best to classify them.
References
This article uses material from the Wikipedia Simple English article South Asian river dolphin, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
®Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wiki Foundation, Inc. Wiki Simple English (DUHOCTRUNGQUOC.VN) is an independent company and has no affiliation with Wiki Foundation.