‘Deceptively cute' ancient whale with razor-sharp teeth and eyes the size of tennis balls discovered in Australia
This early species, called Janjucetus dullardi, was an extremely unusual animal, said Dr Erich Fitzgerald, senior curator of vertebrate palaeontology at Museums Victoria Research Institute.
It was tiny – about the size of a dolphin – and had razor-sharp teeth, bearing little resemblance to its closest living relatives in the baleen whale family, including blue whales, some of the largest animals to ever live.
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The whale's heavily built skull was 'almost over-engineered', Fitzgerald said. It had relatively large eyes – approaching the size of tennis balls – and a short snout with deeply rooted teeth for gripping and tearing.
'This was a really gnarly whale that I personally wouldn't want to get in the water with,' Fitzgerald said.
'It's essentially a little whale with big eyes and a mouth full of sharp, slicing teeth,' said co-author Ruairidh Duncan, a researcher at the Museums Victoria Research Institute and Monash University. 'Imagine the shark-like version of a baleen whale – small and deceptively cute, but definitely not harmless.'
Duncan and Fitzgerald described the new species in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society from an 'exceedingly rare' fossil find that included a partial skull, ear bone and eight teeth – key features that enabled the scientists to identify it as a new species.
When fully grown, the species was probably about 3m long. But the fossil was most likely a juvenile, based on its wide open root canals, barely worn teeth and bone connections that were not as tightly fused as in a mature specimen. 'This individual was probably no more than about 2 - 2.2m long,' Fitzgerald said. 'You could fit it on to a beach towel.'
Janjucetus dullardi lived during the Oligocene (30-23 million years ago) – about halfway back to the extinction of the dinosaurs – a time of global warmth and rising seas. It was the fourth known species from a group known as mammalodontids, unusual animals that were an 'early offshoot' of the baleen whale family tree, Fitzgerald said.
He said evidence from fossils of tiny plankton from the Jan Juc Formation – the same kind of rock – suggested sea temperatures in southern Australia would have been warmer then, more akin to subtropical waters off Coffs Harbour.
'In these seas, there was this extraordinary abundance of life, including all these little whales, giant penguins, sharks – about a third, or even twice as long as today's great white shark – and various other primitive dolphins and other species of whales. It was a very different world,' Fitzgerald said.
It was a turning point in the history of life in the oceans, and the beginning of an explosion in the diversification of whales and dolphins.
Flinders University palaeontologist Prof John Long, who was not involved in the paper, said the fossil was a remarkable find that could help uncover the evolutionary steps as early carnivorous whales transitioned to become filter feeders.
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'To understand the radiation and evolution of the big baleen whales that live today, we need to look at the fossil record to see the stages of how they acquired their special characters,' he said.
It also highlighted the value of fieldwork, by professional scientists and members of the public, Long said.
The discovery wouldn't have been possible without local resident and school principal Ross Dullard, who found the specimen in 2019 while walking along the beach near Jan Juc on Victoria's surf coast.
Recognising the fossil's significance, Dullard donated the fossil to the museum for further study. In recognition of his contribution, the new species was named in his honour.
This highlighted the critical role that members of the public continued to play in Australian palaeontology, Fitzgerald said. 'It's a reminder that world-changing fossils can be found in your own back yard.'
'Victoria has got a rich fossil heritage,' said Long. 'I grew up in Melbourne and collected fossils as a kid since I was seven. You can find fossils of nearly all geological periods in Victoria … if you know where to look.'
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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. Boasting fiendish teeth and a shark-like snout, however, this oddball of the ocean was nasty, mean and built to hunt. 'It was, let's say, deceptively cute,' said Erich Fitzgerald, senior curator of vertebrate palaeontology at Museums Victoria Research Institute, and one of the paper's authors. '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.' 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's Victoria state. Jan Juc Beach, a cradle for some of the weirdest whales in history, is becoming a hotspot for understanding early whale evolution, Mr Fitzgerald said. 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. The tiny predators, thought to have grown to three metres (10ft) in length, were an early branch on the line that led to today's 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. 'They may have had tiny little nubbins of legs just projecting as stumps from the wall of the body,' said Mr Fitzgerald. That mystery will remain tantalisingly 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. Janjucetus dullardi was named by researchers after an amateur fossil hunter who does not mind its looks in the slightest. 'It's literally been the greatest 24 hours of my life,' said Ross Dullard, who discovered the skull while fossil hunting at Jan Juc Beach. After Wednesday's confirmation of the new species, the school principal walked like a rock star on to campus with 'high fives coming left, right and centre', he said. His friends and family are probably just relieved it is over. 'That's all they've heard from me for about the last six years,' he said. Mr 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. He knew enough to recognise it was unlikely to belong to a dog or a seal. 'I thought, geez, we've got something special here,' he said. Mr Dullard sent photos to Museums Victoria, where Mr Fitzgerald saw them and immediately suspected a new species. 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. Fossils of sufficient quality, with enough of the right details preserved to confirm uniqueness, are not common. 'Cetaceans represent a fairly miniscule population of all life,' Mr Fitzgerald said. Millions of years of erosion, scavengers and ocean currents take their toll on whale skeletons too. 'It's 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,' he added. 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's marine life might respond to climate change. Meanwhile, Mr Dullard planned to host a fossil party this weekend, featuring cetacean-themed games and whale-shaped treats in jello, to celebrate his find finally being confirmed. 'That's taken my concentration for six years,' he said. 'I've had sleepless nights. I've dreamt about this whale.'
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