Australian scientists have found a razor-toothed whale that prowled the seas 26 million years in the past, saying Wednesday the species was “deceptively cute” however a fearsome predator.
Museums Victoria pieced collectively the species from an unusually well-preserved cranium fossil discovered on Victoria’s Surf Coast in 2019.
In a examine printed Tuesday, scientists say they found a “quick, sharp-toothed predator” that will have been concerning the measurement of a dolphin.
“It is basically slightly whale with large eyes and a mouth stuffed with sharp, slicing enamel,” mentioned researcher Ruairidh Duncan. “Think about the shark-like model of a baleen whale — small and deceptively cute, however undoubtedly not innocent.”
Museums Victoria launched a video exhibiting Duncan talk about the invention and the way researchers have been in a position to determine the species.
Artwork by Ruairidh Duncan/Museums Victoria 
The cranium belonged to a gaggle of prehistoric whales often known as the mammalodontids, distant smaller kin of in the present day’s filter-feeding whales.
It’s the fourth mammalodontid species ever found, Museums Victoria mentioned. And it’s the third to be recognized in Victoria following discoveries in 2006 and 1939, the Australian Broadcasting Company reported.
“This fossil opens a window into how historical whales grew and altered, and the way evolution formed their our bodies as they tailored to life within the sea,” mentioned palaeontologist Erich Fitzgerald, who co-authored the examine.
Victoria’s Surf Coast lies on the Jan Juc Formation — a geological characteristic relationship to the Oligocene epoch between 23 and 30 million years in the past.
A string of uncommon fossils have been unearthed alongside the scenic stretch of seashore, a famend website for the examine of early whale evolution.
“This area was as soon as a cradle for a few of the most uncommon whales in historical past, and we’re solely simply starting to uncover their tales,” mentioned Fitzgerald. “We’re coming into a brand new part of discovery.
“This area is rewriting the story of how whales got here to rule the oceans, with some shocking plot twists.”
Fitzgerald instructed the ABC the whale was distinctive to Australia.
“In the event that they have been alive in the present day, they might be as iconically Australian as a kangaroo,” he mentioned.
The species was named Janjucetus dullardi, a nod to native Ross Dullard who stumbled throughout the cranium whereas strolling the seashore in 2019.
It was described within the peer-reviewed Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
The invention comes two years after scientists introduced they found an historical whale in Peru that might be the heaviest animal ever to exist.
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