A rare whale species that's never before been seen has beached in New Zealand. Two spade-toothed beaked whales, Mesoplodon traversii (pictured above, or view larger), previously known from only a few widely-scattered bone fragments, were positively identified using DNA technologies by a team of scientists from the University of Auckland.

"This is the first time a spade-toothed beaked whale has been seen as a complete specimen, and we were lucky enough to find two of them," said whale expert Rochelle Constantine, a senior lecturer in biology at the University of Auckland and corresponding author on the just-published paper.

Beaked whales are placed into the taxonomic family Ziphiidae, which consists of 21 species of toothed whales, all of which have distinctive elongated beaks. However, due to strong similarities in appearance and habits, beaked whales are cryptic species that are very difficult to distinguish in the wild.

Further, because ziphiids have low population densities and because they are exceptionally deep divers found only in the open ocean, this may explain why they are one of the most enigmatic mammalian families.

"It is remarkable that we know almost nothing about such a large mammal", said Dr Constantine.

Adding to the potential for confusion, New Zealand reports one of the greatest diversities of stranded cetacean species in the world, including 13 of the 21 known species of beaked whales.

"New Zealand is surrounded by massive oceans," explained Dr Constantine, adding; "there is a lot of marine life [in the oceans] that remains unknown to us."

According to Dr Constantine, the adult female whale (5.3 metres/17 feet long; see photograph below) and her male calf (3.5 metres/11 feet) stranded and later died on New Zealand's Opape Beach in the Bay of Plenty on 31 December 2010. .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/grrlscientist/2012/nov/06/1

remarkable !

They'll find a dinosaur very soon

how much they wan sell am? i go go prepare soup for weekend

quite interesting but not surprising. only about ten years ago they found an isolated tribe of humans that have had no contact with the outside world for thousands of years (people that thought a bulldozer was an animal coming to eat them ). same with a species of monkey found about twenty years ago. I bet we still have many more surprising things to discover in our beautiful little planet

Ha!!! NLers wont check out this thread because it involves a rare fish but it is not in a soup, which is where all specimens of fish belong.

usmsam: Ha!!! NLers wont check out this thread because it involves a rare fish but it is not in a soup, which is where all specimens of fish belong.

b4 nko

Na only Baba God save am, wey be say e no land for our shores.....dem for take am make exotic fish stew sharp-sharp (peeps at the scene -sharp knifes at the ready- would look at the marine biologists pleading for its life to be spared like they're crazy ); the poor thing would go from 'rare' to 'extinct' specie in the time it takes to cook a delicious pot of stew together with accompanying condiments.