Danica Davidson
August 15, 2025 
A partial skull chanced upon in Australia in 2019 has been declared a newly discovered, extinct species of whale and given the name Janjucetus dullardi. The specimen will help scientists better understand whale evolution — and it’s getting compared to Pokémon.
Senior curator of vertebrate paleontology at Museums Victoria Research Institute Erich Fitzgerald, who was one of the authors to write a scientific paper on the discovery, described the long-gone creature as “deceptively cute.”
Fitzgerald continued, “It might have looked for all the world like some weird kind of mash-up between a whale, a seal and a Pokémon but they were very much their own thing.”
It got its name because it was discovered by a principal and amateur fossil hunter named Ross Dullard at Jan Juc Beach. He was fossil hunting at the time and found something unbelievable.
“I thought, geez, we’ve got something special here,” Dullard remarked. Images he sent to Museums Victoria caught Fitzgerald’s attention.
The whale was believed to have been about fully 10 feet in length, small compared to today’s whales. It had eyes the size of tennis balls. And it had very prominent teeth.
The “Pokémon” whale lived about 25 million years ago, which fits it into the Oligocene Epoch that lasted 34 to 23 million years ago. It’s the fourth whale species found during that time period. The early whales from this particular epoch are called mammalodontids.
The traveling Pokémon Fossil Museum uses Pokémon to teach kids science, and next year in May it will be at the Field Museum in Chicago. With the comparisons to the franchise, it could potentially be a fun thing to add the Janjucetus dullardi to the collection, even if it really isn’t a pocket monster.
For more otaku-related science, you could always check out this crustacean named after Ranma ½ because of its Ranma-ish qualities.
Source: AP via Toronto Sun
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Danica Davidson is the author of the bestselling Manga Art for Beginners with artist Melanie Westin, plus its sequel, Manga Art for Everyone, and the first-of-its-kind manga chalk book Chalk Art Manga, both illustrated by professional Japanese mangaka Rena Saiya. Check out her other comics and books at www.danicadavidson.com.
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