A Rare Find

Two whales are found on a New Zealand beach and it was initially thought that they were Gray's beaked whales, or Mesoplodon grayi. However, after sequencing part of the whales' mitochondrial DNA, researchers from University of Auckland realized that the whales were actually spade-toothed beaked whales, or M. traversii. As they note in Current Biology, spade-toothed beaked whales are quite elusive, with them only previously being identified from pieces of bones.

"We can now confirm that the spade-toothed whale is extant … and for the first time we have a description of the world's rarest and perhaps most enigmatic marine mammal," the Auckland researchers write.