The first-ever dissection of the world’s rarest whale has enabled Indigenous people and conservation scientists in New Zealand to learn more about one of their taoka, which means treasure in the ...

But on Monday a small group of scientists and cultural experts in New Zealand clustered around a near-perfectly preserved spade-toothed whale hoping to decode decades of mystery.

A most rare whale was found beached in New Zealand near a river estuary in the province of Otago last week. Classified as spade-toothed, little is known about the cetacean, where they live in the ...

— Spade-toothed whales are the world’s rarest, with no live sightings ever recorded. No one knows how many there are, what they eat, or even where they live in the vast expanse of the southern Pacific ...

The first spade-toothed whale bones were found in 1872 on New Zealand's Pitt Island. Another discovery was made at an offshore island in the 1950s, and the bones of a third were found on Chile's ...