Long 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.
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.
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Unlike today’s whales, the juvenile specimen was small enough to fit in a single bed.
An illustration depicting Janjucetus dullardi chasing a fish. AP
Boasting fiendish teeth and a shark-like snout, however, this oddball of the ocean was nasty, mean and built to hunt.
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