The spade-toothed beaked whale has not been seen in 150 years. Now two of the rare animals — a mother and her calf — have been identified.
The whales washed up on an New Zealand beach in 2010. Scientists originally thought they were a couple of Gray's beaked whales (shown right), which commonly end up stranded on the shoreline. Researchers photographed the dead animals, took tissue samples and then buried them.
But after two years and DNA analysis, biologists have determined that the two specimens were the long sought-after spade-toothed beaked variety.
This is the first time the elusive animal has been seen as a whole animal. The spade-toothed was first discovered in 1872 when a jaw was found on a Pacific Island. Since then, the only knowledge scientists have of the spade-toothed whale is from two partial skulls, one found in New Zealand in 1950 and the other found on a Chilean island in 1986.
No one knows why the spade-toothed whale is so rare or if these two individuals were the last of their kind. It's more likely, however, that the whales live in very deep waters and hardly ever wash to shore when they die.
The spade-toothed whale is shown below:
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