New Australian ocean predator with ‘extremely sharp’ teeth discovered | #yahoonewsau

Subscribe and turn on notifications🔔 : https://buff.ly/3F6ZiLt | A previously unknown Australian whale species has been discovered off the coast of Victoria.

A few fossillised teeth and skull fragments were unearthed by erosion at the base of a cliff between Jan Juc and Bells Beach, and a local man on a beach walk found them in 2019.

Museums Victoria’s senior curator Dr Erich Fitzgerald explained that the 26-million-year-old Janjucetus dullardi was no bigger than a dolphin, making it small by modern standards, but it was a formidable predator with flesh-cutting teeth that were more brutal than those of a lion.

He said, “They are extremely sharp for a whale, and very different to any alive today… The jawbones of Janjucetus dullardi are quite heavily built, and on the back end of the skull, there are very large areas for the attachment of jaw-closing muscles. So it all points to this animal being pretty powerful for its size.”

It’s unknown why these primitive creatures vanished from the Earth, but it’s thought a relatively sudden cooling driven by glaciation in Antarctica led to a sea level fall around the coast of Victoria, and they lost their habitat.

Read more: https://au.yahoo.com/news/beach-walker-stumbles-upon-new-australian-ocean-predator-with-extremely-sharp-teeth-064222289.html

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