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Museums Victoria Researcher Ruairidh Duncan (L) and Palaeontologist Erich Fitzgerald with the partial fossil skull and teeth of Janjucetus dullardi in Melbourne.(afp) <\/p>\n
SYDNEY – Australian scientists have discovered a razor-toothed whale that prowled the seas 26 million years ago, saying Wednesday the species was “deceptively cute” but a fearsome predator.<\/p>\n
Museums Victoria pieced together the species from an unusually well-preserved skull fossil found on Victoria’s Surf Coast in 2019.<\/p>\n
Scientists discovered a “fast, sharp-toothed predator” that would have been about the size of a dolphin.<\/p>\n
“It’s essentially a little whale with big eyes and a mouth full of sharp, slicing teeth,” said researcher Ruairidh Duncan.<\/p>\n
“Imagine the shark-like version of a baleen whale — small and deceptively cute, but definitely not harmless.”<\/p>\n
The skull belonged to a group of prehistoric whales known as the mammalodontids, distant smaller relatives of today’s filter-feeding whales.<\/p>\n
It is the fourth mammalodontid species ever discovered, Museums Victoria said.<\/p>\n
“This fossil opens a window into how ancient whales grew and changed, and how evolution shaped their bodies as they adapted to life in the sea,” said palaeontologist Erich Fitzgerald, who co-authored the study.<\/p>\n
Victoria’s Surf Coast lies on the Jan Juc Formation — a geological feature dating to the Oligocene epoch between 23 and 30 million years ago.<\/p>\n
A string of rare fossils have been unearthed along the scenic stretch of beach, a renowned site for the study of early whale evolution.<\/p>\n
“This region was once a cradle for some of the most unusual whales in history, and we’re only just beginning to uncover their stories,” said Fitzgerald.<\/p>\n
“We’re entering a new phase of discovery.<\/p>\n
“This region is rewriting the story of how whales came to rule the oceans, with some surprising plot twists.”<\/p>\n
The species was named Janjucetus dullardi, a nod to local Ross Dullard who stumbled across the skull while strolling the beach in 2019.<\/p>\n
It was described in the peer-reviewed Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PUBLISHED : 13 Aug 2025 at 14:45 \u00a0 Small \u00a0 Medium \u00a0 Large Museums Victoria Researcher Ruairidh Duncan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-68747","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}