Still, hybrids were not unheard of in cetaceans such as whales and dolphins—both in captivity and in the wild. Since cetaceans have very similar numbers of chromosomes across species, researchers had speculated they could produce viable hybrids more easily than other mammals.
"Ironically, one translation of clymene can mean notorious or infamous, and now this dolphin turns out it's living up to its name by being the first marine mammal known to arise through hybrid speciation," said study co-author Howard Rosenbaum, a marine biologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society and American Museum of Natural History in New York.