New Zealand scientists suspect specimen of world's rarest whale died from head injuries
CTV
Scientists suspect the first complete specimen ever recorded of the world's rarest whale died from head injuries, an expert said Friday.
Scientists suspect the first complete specimen ever recorded of the world’s rarest whale died from head injuries, an expert said Friday.
The first dissection of a spade-toothed whale, a type of beaked whale, was completed last week after a painstaking examination at a research center near the New Zealand city of Dunedin, the local people who led the scientific team, Te Rūnanga Ōtākou, said in a statement issued by the New Zealand Department of Conservation.
A near-perfectly preserved five-metre (16-foot) male was found washed up on a South Island beach in July. It was the first complete specimen ever recorded. There have only been seven known sightings and never of a living spade-toothed whale.
New Zealand conservation agency beaked whale expert Anton van Helden said the whale’s broken jaw and bruising to the head and neck led scientists to believe that head trauma may have caused its death.
“We don’t know, but we suspect there must have been some sort of trauma, but what caused that could be anyone’s guess,” van Helden said in a statement.
All varieties of beaked whales have different stomach systems and researchers didn’t know how the spade-toothed type processed its food.
The scientific team found the specimen had nine stomach chambers containing remnants of squid and parasitic worms, the statement said.
Scientists suspect the first complete specimen ever recorded of the world's rarest whale died from head injuries, an expert said Friday.
Human DNA recovered from remains found in Europe is revealing our species' shared history with Neanderthals. The trove is the oldest Homo sapiens DNA ever documented, scientists say.
Raging Canadian wildfires that choked North America under clouds of smoke last year may have contributed to a spike in doctor visits for lung and heart problems thousands of kilometres away.
General Motors is pulling the plug on its efforts to develop a fleet of driverless taxis and will focus on driver-assistance features that require a driver to be ready to take control of the car, the company said Tuesday.
A wildfire that left a third of a popular Rocky Mountain tourist town in ashes, remnants of a hurricane season that led to record-breaking rainfall and a hailstorm that grounded airplanes are among the top weather-related events of 2024.
TikTok is challenging the federal government’s order to shut down its operations in Canada, saying it will eliminate hundreds of jobs and potentially terminate a quarter of a million contracts that it has with Canadian advertising clients.
Major food companies, including Kraft Heinz, Mondelez and Coca-Cola, were hit with a new lawsuit in the U.S. on Tuesday accusing them of designing and marketing 'ultra-processed' foods to be addictive to children, causing chronic disease.
Factor worker Jean Lamontagne, 63, will retire earlier than planned after he won $40 million on Dec. 3 in the Lotto-Max draw.
Indonesian rescuers recovered ten bodies that were swept away in flash floods or buried under tons of mud and rocks that hit hilly villages on the island of Java.
Google on Monday said that it has overcome a key challenge in quantum computing with a new generation of chip, solving a computing problem in five minutes that would take a classical computer more time than the history of the universe.
A Canadian Cancer Society report, published Monday in partnership with Statistics Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada with analysis by Canadian Partnership Against Cancer, estimates a cancer patient will face almost $33,000 on average in out-of-pocket cancer-related costs in their lifetime, including loss of income.