Spade-Toothed Whale:
A whale that was found dead on a beach in New Zealand recently has been identified by scientists as a spade-toothed whale, a species so rare it has never been seen alive.
- Spade-Toothed Whale are the world’s rarest whales, with no live sightings ever recorded.
- The species was first described in 1874 after a lower jaw and two teeth were collected from New Zealand’s Chatham Islands.
- The skeletal remains of two other specimens found off islands in New Zealand and Chile enabled scientists to confirm a new species.
- Two more recent findings of stranded whales off New Zealand’s North Island in 2010 and 2017 added to the small collection.
- Nothing is currently known about the whales’ habitat.
- The creatures deep-dive for food and likely surface so rarely that it has been impossible to narrow their location further than the southern Pacific Ocean, home to some of the world’s deepest ocean trenches.
- No one knows how many there are, what they eat, or even where they live in the vast expanse of the southern Pacific Ocean.
