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<\/p>\nLong before whales were majestic, gentle giants, some of their prehistoric ancestors were tiny, weird and feral. 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 unlock mysteries of whale evolution.<\/p>\n
Researchers this week officially named Janjucetus dullardi, a cartoonish creature with bulging eyes the size of tennis balls, in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. Unlike today’s whales, the juvenile specimen was small enough to fit in a single bed.<\/p>\n
Boasting fiendish teeth and a shark-like snout, however, this oddball of the ocean was nasty, mean and built to hunt.<\/p>\n
“It was, let\u2019s say, deceptively cute,\u201d said Erich Fitzgerald, senior curator of vertebrate paleontology at Museums Victoria Research Institute, and one of the paper’s authors.<\/p>\n
“It might have looked for all the world like some weird kind of mash-up between a whale, a seal and a Pokemon but they were very much their own thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rare discovery of the partial skull, including ear bones and teeth, was made in 2019 on a fossil-rich stretch of coast along Australia\u2019s Victoria state. Jan Juc Beach, a cradle for some of the weirdest whales in history, is becoming a hotspot for understanding early whale evolution, Fitzgerald said.<\/p>\n
Few family trees seem stranger than that of Janjucetus dullardi, only the fourth species ever identified from a group known as mammalodontids, early whales that lived only during the Oligocene Epoch, about 34 to 23 million years ago. That marked the point about halfway through the known history of whales.<\/p>\n
The tiny predators, thought to have grown to 3 meters (10 feet) in length, were an early branch on the line that led to today\u2019s great baleen whales, such as humpbacks, blues and minkes. But the toothy ancestors with powerful jaws would have looked radically different to any modern species.<\/p>\n
“They may have had tiny little nubbins of legs just projecting as stumps from the wall of the body,\u201d said Fitzgerald.<\/p>\n
That mystery will remain tantalizingly unsolved unless a specimen is uncovered with more of its skeleton intact, which would be something of a miracle. Even the partial skull that allowed the initial identification this week was an astonishing discovery.<\/p>\n
Janjucetus dullardi was named by researchers after an amateur fossil hunter who doesn\u2019t mind its looks in the slightest.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s literally been the greatest 24 hours of my life,\u201d said Ross Dullard, who discovered the skull while fossil hunting at Jan Juc Beach. After Wednesday\u2019s confirmation of the new species, the school principal walked like a rock star onto campus with “high fives coming left, right and center,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
His friends and family are probably just relieved it\u2019s over.<\/p>\n
“That\u2019s all they\u2019ve heard from me for about the last six years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Dullard was on a regular low-tide hunt at Jan Juc the day he spotted something black protruding from a cliff. Poking it dislodged a tooth.<\/p>\n
He knew enough to recognize it was unlikely to belong to a dog or a seal.<\/p>\n
“I thought, geez, we\u2019ve got something special here,\u201d he said. Dullard sent photos to Museums Victoria, where Fitzgerald saw them and immediately suspected a new species.<\/p>\n
Confirming the find was another matter. This was the first mammalodontid to be identified in Australia since 2006 and only the third on record in the country.<\/p>\n
Fossils of sufficient quality, with enough of the right details preserved to confirm uniqueness, aren\u2019t common.<\/p>\n
“Cetaceans represent a fairly miniscule population of all life,\u201d Fitzgerald said. Millions of years of erosion, scavengers and ocean currents take their toll on whale skeletons too.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s only the chosen few, the vast minority of all whales that have ever lived and died in the oceans over millions of years, that actually get preserved as fossils,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Finds such as Janjucetus dullardi can unlock insights into how prehistoric whales ate, moved, behaved – and evolved. Researchers said the discoveries also helped to understand how ancient cetacean species adapted to warmer oceans, as they study how today\u2019s marine life might respond to climate change.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Dullard planned to host a fossil party this weekend, featuring cetacean-themed games and whale-shaped treats in jello, to celebrate his nightmare Muppet find, finally confirmed.<\/p>\n
“That\u2019s taken my concentration for six years,\u201d he said. “I\u2019ve had sleepless nights. I\u2019ve dreamt about this whale.\u201d<\/p>\n
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