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Scientists stumped by unusual whale skull finally find answers

Using DNA analysis of an unusual, decades-old whale skull, scientists were finally able to identify the animal as a rare hybrid of a beluga whale and a narwhal, it has been reported.

The animal was reportedly one of three whales killed during subsistence hunting off the shore of Greenland in the mid-1980s, Science News reported.

The analysis, published Thursday in the academic journal Scientific Reports, found the male whale had a narwhal mother and a beluga father.

The three whales all had pectoral fins shaped like belugas and tails shaped like narwhals. Only one of the whales remains have been preserved.

The skull was given to researchers in 1990 by an Inuit hunter who said he had never seen anything like it.

Scientists have now been able to use analytical techniques usually applied to ancient DNA and found the whale was half beluga, half narwhal.

It’s unclear if the hybrid whale is an anomaly, a marine biologist from the University of Washington said, because scientists “infrequently” study remote Arctic whales.

Scientists don’t know if the hybrid mammal could reproduce, Science News reported.