‘Gentle’whale was once a flesh-slicing killer

SCIENTISTS in Australia believe whales were once much more fierce than previously thought and that they had sharp “flesh-slicing” teeth, debunking a long-held theory that ancient whales were as “gentle” as today’s and used their teeth to filter seawater.

Using 3D-scans of a prehistoric tooth that belonged to a whale that swam off the coast of Australia 25million years ago, the scientists found that the ancient creatures had “teeth as sharp as a lion’s”. The ancient tooth was discovered last year by someone walking along a beach near Melbourne.

The finding could overturn evolutionary notions that have been prevalent since Charles Darwin, who believed that ancient whales used their teeth to filter food. It was this method that helped the modern whale to survive as one of the world’s biggest creatures, fostering its reputation as a gentle giant of the sea.

David Hocking, of Monash University and Museum Victoria, said ancient whales were “neither gentle, nor giants”, noting that they were smaller and that their teeth suggested they were “a lot meaner”.

“One of the big mysteries of evolution is how whales made this evolutionary leap from catching fish with teeth to sieving plankton … we’ve now solved one part of this puzzle.”

“These results are the first to show that ancient baleen whales had extremely sharp teeth with one function: cutting the flesh of their prey,” said Erich Fitzgerald, from Museums Victoria.

The findings have been published in the journal Biology Letters.