Albicetus is a genus of stem-sperm whales that lived around 15 million years ago, found in Santa Barbara, California in 1909. It was originally wrongly categorized for decades as belonging to a group of extinct walruses. It was named Albicetus, meaning "white whale," a reference to the leviathan in Herman Melville's classic 1851 novel Moby Dick, centering on Captain Ahab's obsession with a huge white sperm whale.