New species of prehistoric whale discovered in Australia

“Small and cute, but certainly not harmless.” This is how Ruairidh Duncan, a doctoral student at Australia’s Monash University, describes the whale, which lived around 25 million years ago and whose fossil analysis has determined it to be a now-extinct species previously unknown to scientists.

Named Janjucetus dullardi, it is described in an article in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society published this Tuesday, August 12. This “extremely rare” fossil, according to the researchers quoted by ABC , was discovered in 2019 at Jan Juc, a surfing hotspot on the southeast coast of Australia. It includes a partial skull, an ear bone, and eight teeth, key elements in determining that it is an entirely new species.

“What’s really important about this new fossil whale species is that it’s the ancestor of baleen whales, and among others gentle giants like the humpback whale and the blue whale,” said Erich Fitzgerald, senior curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Victorian Museums Research Institute, a co-author of the study.

But unlike modern specimens, Janjucetus dullardi had large eyes, sharp teeth, and would have measured around 3 meters as an adult. Tiny compared to today's aquatic giants: the pygmy whale, the smallest baleen whale, measures 6 meters, and the largest, the blue whale, around 30 meters.

ABC specifies that this is the third specimen of Mammalodontidae – a family of cetaceans from the Oligocene – identified in the fossilized remains discovered in the state of Victoria (the first two were in 1939 and 2006 ), and only the fourth worldwide. But above all, it is the only one to have properly preserved teeth and internal structures. “This is the first time in almost twenty years that a new species of fossil whale has been discovered in Australia,” insists the Australian channel’s website. According to Erich Fitzgerald:

“If she were alive today, she would be as iconic as the kangaroo is to Australia.”

Researchers would now like to learn more about this animal—how its history began, how it evolved—and, of course, what led to its extinction. But to do that, many more fossils would need to be discovered, not just of this species, but also of those that coexisted with it and its descendants.