Dear colleagues, we are pleased to announce the recent publication of a new phylogenetic analysis of living and extinct baleen whales, based on both morphological and molecular data: Marx, F.G. and Fordyce, R. E. 2015. Baleen boom and bust: a synthesis of mysticete phylogeny, diversity and disparity. Royal Society Open Science 2:140434. Our study provides the first fully dated mysticete phylogeny, with all nodes (even those giving rise to purely fossil lineages) dated using a combined molecular/morphological clock approach. In addition, we provide an accompanying database of more than 4,000 specimen images on MorphoBank (www.morphobank.org, project 687). The paper is freely accessible at: http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/4/140434 Thank you very much and kind regards, Felix Marx ________________________________ Felix G. Marx PhD JSPS Postdoctoral Research Fellow Division of Biotic Evolution/ Department of Geology and Palaeontology National Museum of Nature and Science 4-1-1 Amakubo, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0005, Japan; tel. +81 (0)29-853-8263 --- Research Collaborator, School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, United Kingdom