Melbourne fossil find reveals deep past of world`s most mysterious living whale
(Artdaily.org)

A seemingly unremarkable fossil held in the Museums Victoria’s collection for over 60 years, has been identified by paleontologists as the oldest known evidence of the enigmatic living pygmy right whale, proving that it most likely originated in the southern ocean and has a history in Australia that stretches back more than 5 million years. Collected at Beaumaris in Melbourne`s bayside by a former Museums Victoria paleontologist George Baxter Pritchard in the 1950s, it was immediately identified as a whale ear bone. But its immense significance was not fully recognised until late 2017 when current Museums Victoria paleontologist Dr Erich Fitzgerald and a research fellow, Dr Felix Marx, were looking at whale ear bones in the museum’s Paleontology Collection storeroom and made the exciting discovery that it belonged to the pygmy right whale.