Shocking Discovery Breaks Scientists’ Previously Accepted Research

Featured Image Credit: Robert Pitman
By: Sarah Sharkey

Until very recently, scientists believed that pygmy right whales were endemic to the southern hemisphere. This is because it was found in the southern waters of Australia, South America, Africa and New Zealand.

New research into a fossilized skull and ear bone are changing everything scientists thought they knew about this species. The skull was found after World War II in Okinawa, Japan by US geologists. It was then tucked away into a cabinet at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Dr. Erich Fitzgerald, senior curator of vertebrate paleontology at Museums Victoria, found the fossil in 2008 while working on a research fellowship. He could not believe it was from Japan!

The ear bone was found more recently, after its discovery, Fitzgerald and his colleagues decided that there could be no mistake, this whales had been in the northern hemisphere at some point. It appears that during a period of climate cooling the pygmy right whales were able to pass through the invisible barrier of the equator and establish populations in the northern hemisphere. Then the climate warmed and separated the two populations, but the one in the northern hemisphere just did not survive for a variety of possible reasons.

This was extremely unexpected, but an exciting discovery for these scientists.

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