Balaenidae is a
family of
whales of the
parvorder Mysticeti that contains two living genera. Historically, it is known as the right whale family, as it was thought to contain only species of
right whales. Through most of the 20th Century, however, that became a much-debated (and unresolved) topic amongst the scientific community. Finally, in the early 2000s, science reached a definitive conclusion: the
bowhead whale, once commonly known as the Greenland right whale, was not in fact a right whale. The family of Balaenids, therefore, comprises the right whales (genus
Eubalaena), and in a genus all to its own, the very closely related bowhead whale (genus
Balaena).