Museum unveils coast’s link to prehistoric past

Hamish Heard
International whale experts have focussed on the cliffs between Torquay and Bells Beach after a scientific study into a Jan Juc fossil skull unlocked secrets of a previously unknown species.
Researcher Erich Fitzgerald, a PhD student in veterbrate evolutionary biology, said the find cemented the area’s status as one of the world’s most important locations for studies of whale evolution.
Melbourne Museum unveiled the prehistoric whale’s skull and an artist’s conception of the whale on Wednesday.
The Independent revealed in November that Mr Fitzgerald was close to piecing together the whale’s appearance after chipping the skull from a rock over three years.
A local surfer, Staumn Hunder, discovered the fossil when he saw bones protruding from a rock on a beach south-west of Jan Juc in the late 1990s.
The whale’s scientific name, janjucetus hunderi, is a combination of Mr Hunder’s surname and Jan Juc.
Mr Fitzgerald said the discovery had unearthed “an entirely new branch on the evolutionary tree of whales”.
“As more of the research surrounding the find comes to light, and it will over the next year, a lot of the world’s scientific media will be focussing on the cliffs between Torquay and Bells Beach,” he said.
Mr Fitzgerald made public his thesis on the whale this week at the unveiling of the fossil and the whale image.
He said the fossil was the most important of eight whale skulls and skeletons found in the area.
He called the discoveries “critical” to scientists’ understanding of the evolution of whales.
“Janjucetus represents a weird side branch, a detour from the main evolutionary line of whales which leads to what we see in our oceans today,” Mr Fitzgerald said.
“For the layperson it’s okay to say it is a missing link between the ancient toothed whales and the living baleen whales.”
Janjucetus, with a 50cm-long head and a body up to 3.5 metres in length, had finger-sized, serrated teeth.
Mr Fitzgerald discouraged locals from searching for fossils in the “unstable and dangerous” cliffs between Torquay and Bells Beach.
But he urged anyone who found something of interest to contact Museum Victoria.
“This fossil is a discovery made by a local teenager who had the foresight to call the museum and it’s those sorts of acts that paleontologists rely on,” Mr Fitzgerald said.