CHARLOTTE GRAHAMMCLAY

Associated Press

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Long before whales were majestic, gentle giants, some of their prehistoric ancestors were tiny, weird and feral.

A chance discovery of a 25-million-year-old fossil on an Australian beach allowed paleontologists to identify a rare, entirely new species that could unlock mysteries of whale evolution.

Researchers this past week officially named Janjucetus dullardi, a cartoonish creature with bulging eyes the size of tennis balls, in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

Unlike today's whales, the juvenile specimen was small enough to fit in a single bed. Boasting fiendish teeth and a shark-like snout, however, this oddball of the ocean was nasty, mean and built to hunt.

"It was, let's say, deceptively cute," said

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