A chance discovery of a 25-million-year-old fossil on an Australian beach has allowed paleontologists to identify a rare, entirely new species that could shed light on the evolution of whales.
This week, in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, scientists officially named it Janjucetus dullardi – a cartoonish creature with bulging, tennis-ball-sized eyes.
Unlike modern whales, the juvenile was compact enough to fit on a single bed.
However, with devilish teeth and a shark-like snout, this ocean anomaly was terrifying, sinister and designed for the hunt.
“It was, shall we say, deceptively cute,” said Erich Fitzgerald, senior curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Museums Research Institute Victoria and one of the paper's authors.
“On one hand, it looked like a strange combination of a whale, a seal and a Pokemon, but in reality they were quite independent creatures.”
A unique discovery of a partial skull, including ear bones and teeth, was made in 2019 in a fossil-rich area of the coast of the Australian state of Victoria.
Mr Fitzgerald said Jean-Juques Beach, where some of the most unusual whales in history have been discovered, was becoming a base for research into the early evolution of whales.
Few family trees look as strange as that of Janjucetus dullardi, only the fourth species ever identified from the group known as mammal-like whales, early whales that only existed during the Oligocene epoch, some 34 to 23 million years ago.
This marked about the middle of the known history of whales.
These small predators, thought to reach three metres (10 feet) in length, were an early branch of the lineage that led to modern large baleen whales such as humpbacks, blues and minke whales.
However, the toothy ancestors with powerful jaws looked completely different from any modern species.
“They may have had tiny leg appendages protruding from the body wall like stumps,” Mr Fitzgerald said.
This mystery will remain unsolved until a specimen is found with a largely intact skeleton, which would be something of a miracle.
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
