Mother Nature still manages to surprise us.
Back in June of 2014, a dead whale washed up on the shore of the Pribilof Islands community of St. George in the middle of Alaska's Bering Sea. Spotted by a young biology teacher, the carcass was eventually analyzed by a group of scientists who believed it to be a species variety known as Baird. But, given the animal's "different dorsal fin and head shape, and darker coloration," experts deemed it unclassifiable and passed on the discovery to Philip Morin of NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in California, who happened to be researching karasu whales (also referred to as raven), a rare Baird variety that Japanese whalers have been mentioning since the 1940s.
Morin analyzed the corpse alongside a number of other samples in his team's collection (178 different specimens in total), which culminated in the release of a Marine Mammal Science study that officially associates the corpse as to the much chronicled (but never discovered) karasu species.
Speaking to National Geographic, Morin expressed a lot of enthusiasm: "It's just so exciting to think that in 2016 we're still discovering things in our world—even mammals that are more than 20 feet long".
The excitement, echoed across the marine biology community, is accompanied by slight worry. Erich Hoyt, a coauthor on the study and a research fellow with Whale and Dolphin Conversation in the United Kingdom, recently put out a press release expressing his potential concern: "The implication of a new species of beaked whale is that we need to reconsider management of both species to be sure they're sufficiently protected, considering how rare the new one appears to be. Discovering a new species of whale in 2016 is exciting but it also reveals how little we know and how much more work we have to do to truly understand these species."
From exciting new whales to newly-hatched fairy penguins, we seem to be living in a whole new world.