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Hardly gentle giants

The discovery of a skull in southeast Australia, has been identified to be that of a 25 million year old fossil. It is supposed to belong to a new family of small, highly predatory, toothed baleen whale with enormous eyes, says Erich Fitzgerald, Museum Victoria Research Associate and Monash University Ph.D student. At present the skull is exhibited at the Melbourne Museum. Arguably this is one of the most internationally significant fossils ever discovered in Australia. The bone proves that the baleen whale, including toothless filter-feeders like the blue whale, often thought of as gentle giants of the sea, were not always gentle or giant.

COMPILED BY NIMI KURIAN

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