A five-meter whale, a species thought to have been extinct, was washed up on the coast of New Zealand. Unfortunately, it could not be saved, so the carcass was handed over to scientists for research. The incident occurred back in July, but it has only now come to light.
In total, only seven specimens of the shovel-toothed whale have ever been recorded. This whale is considered the rarest species of whale in the world, and for the first time, scientists had the opportunity to study an entire specimen. All previous knowledge about this animal was based on the study of bones and tissue found from specimens discovered decades apart. The chance to study such a unique specimen allows biologists to fill in the missing information about the species.
Shovel-toothed whales are a type of beaked whale, named for their teeth, which resemble the blade of a spade once used to scrape blubber from whales. Since the 1800s, only seven individuals have been documented, and nearly all have been found in New Zealand. Only once, in the 1950s, were bones found on Robinson Crusoe Island in Chile. No live mammals of this species have ever been seen.
Beaked whales are considered the most mysterious group of large mammals on the planet. They are deep-diving creatures rarely seen at sea, spending nearly all their time deep beneath the surface, hunting for squid and small fish.
The first specimen of the shovel-toothed whale was discovered in 1874. The species was first described based on a lower jawbone and two teeth found on the Chatham Islands off the eastern coast of New Zealand’s South Island. DNA taken from the tissues of two deceased specimens, a mother and calf, in 2010 allowed scientists to describe its appearance. In 2017, another specimen was washed up far in the Waihī Bay, north of Gisborne, and was buried before an autopsy.
In a 2012 study on the shovel-toothed whale published in Current Biology, scientists note that several species of beaked whales live in the southern part of the Pacific Ocean, where some of the deepest ocean trenches in the world are located.