The second specimen, a complete skull sent from the Seychelles by a M. Leduc in 1839, was named Ziphius seychellensis by the English zoologist John Edward Gray in 1846; the French scientist Paul Gervais later placed this specimen in the genus Dioplodon ("two-toothed").
In 1847, he and Paul Gervais compared it to "Delphinius geoffrensis" (=Amazon river dolphin, Inia geoffrensis), which had been described from a stuffed specimen in Lisbon, and the two were considered synonyms for more than a century.
It wasn't until 1850 that zoologists realized the extant nature of the species, when Paul Gervais compared the type specimen to another that had stranded at Aresquiès, Hérault, in May of the same year, and found the two to be identical.
The specimen somehow made its way to the French scientist Paul Gervais, who described it as a new species in 1855.
It was first described by Paul Gervais and Alcide d'Orbigny in 1844 (the species epithet blainvillei commemorates the French zoologist Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville).
In 1865 he accepted the professorship of zoology at the Sorbonne, vacant through the death of Louis Pierre Gratiolet; this post he left in 1868 for the chair of comparative anatomy at the Paris museum of natural history, the anatomical collections of which were greatly enriched by his exertions.
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In 1848-1852 appeared his important work Zoologie et paléontologie françaises, supplementary to the palaeontological publications of Georges Cuvier and Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville; of this a second and greatly improved edition was issued in 1859.
With French zoologist Paul Gervais (1816–1879), he published an important work on extinct and living cetaceans titled Ostéographie des Cétacés, vivants et fossiles.
The tucuxi Sotalia fluviatilis was described by Gervais and Deville in 1853, and the costero Sotalia guianensis by Pierre-Joseph van Bénéden in 1864.
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French paleontologist Paul Gervais described the new genus based on MNHN 1868-242, a humerus found at Mont Ventoux, near Bédoin.