Offshore and coastal common bottlenose dolphins of the western South Atlantic face‐to‐face: What the skull and the spine can tell us

The taxonomy of Tursiops truncatus in the western South Atlantic is not resolved. Two different hypotheses have been proposed: (1) offshore and coastal ecotypes with a parapatric distribution, and (2) two species, T. truncatus and T. gephyreus , living in sympatry. To test these hypotheses, we examined a total of 100 physically mature skulls and 35 vertebral columns from the suggested overlap zone in southern Brazil. In all skulls, 24...