{"id":70384,"date":"2025-08-15T14:18:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T14:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/70384\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T14:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T14:18:09","slug":"bizarre-mammalodontid-whales-inhabited-australian-waters-25-million-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/70384\/","title":{"rendered":"Bizarre Mammalodontid Whales Inhabited Australian Waters 25 Million Years Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tiny, toothed mammalodontids<\/a> were among the strangest of all whales. If alive today, they would be as iconically Australian as kangaroos. In a new paper<\/a> published this week in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, paleontologists described a new mammalodontid species \u2014 named Janjucetus dullardi \u2014 from a 25-million-year-old specimen found in Victoria, Australia.<\/p>\n

\"Janjucetus<\/a><\/p>\n

Janjucetus dullardi calf and mother swimming through the shallow seas off Victoria, 25 million years ago. Image credit: Ruairidh Duncan.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, some of the most iconic whale species, such as blue and humpback whales, are baleen whales,\u201d said<\/a> Monash University paleontologist Ruairidh Duncan and colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese ocean giants use hair-like structures in their mouths, called baleen, to filter plankton \u2014 their main food source.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBy contrast, mammalodontids were small-bodied (no longer than 3 m), big-eyed, and had short jaws lined with teeth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite this description, we know that mammalodontids were, in fact, baleen whales \u2026 that lacked baleen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were like an offshoot from the main evolutionary branch leading to today\u2019s toothless giants.\u201d<\/p>\n

All known mammalodontid species lived during the Late Oligocene epoch, between 27 and 23 million years ago.<\/p>\n

And three out of four named species have been found on Victoria\u2019s Surf Coast, south-east of Melbourne.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first mammalodontid was found in 1932, and in 1939 was given the name Mammalodon colliveri,\u201d the paleontologists said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt had blunt jaw bones with extensive blood and nerve supply for face and lip muscles\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCuriously, the teeth were worn down to the gums, suggesting it fed by slurping prey (along with abrasive grit) from the seabed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2006, local naturalist Staumn Hunder found the first fossil of a species later named after him, Janjucetus hunderi.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis whale sported a robust triangular snout with sharp teeth and powerful jaw-closing muscles.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough Mammalodon colliveri and Janjucetus hunderi hint at a surprisingly wide range of lifestyles for mammalodontids, the details of exactly how and when they became so different from other whales remain murky.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 25-million-year-old fossilized remains of Janjucetus dullardi were found on the coast at Jan Juc in Victoria in 2019 by school principal Ross Dullard.<\/p>\n

\u201cJanjucetus dullardi was about 2 m long \u2014 small enough to fit on a standard single bed,\u201d the researchers said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis makes it the smallest fossil whale discovered in Australia, and perhaps the first fossil of a juvenile whale found here.\u201d<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

Ruairidh J. Duncan et al. 2025. An immature toothed mysticete from the Oligocene of Australia and insights into mammalodontid (Cetacea: Mysticeti) morphology, systematics, and ontogeny. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 204 (4): zlaf090; doi: 10.1093\/zoolinnean\/zlaf090<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tiny, toothed mammalodontids were among the strangest of all whales. If alive today, they would be as iconically…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,55450,25455,55451,51442,55452,55453,55454,55455,128,660,38810,338],"class_list":["post-70384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cetacea","tag-fossil","tag-janjucetus","tag-janjucetus-dullardi","tag-mammalodontidae","tag-mysticete","tag-mysticeti","tag-oligocene","tag-science","tag-victoria","tag-whale","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}