Extinction .in

The world's rarest whale has been identified - two years

after two of them washed up in New Zealand.

An adult female spade-toothed beaked whale and her calf were found beached in

2010, but they were mistaken for a more common type of whale and buried.

When tests were done about six months later on samples taken from the

mammals, they showed they were actually the rare spade-toothed beaked kind.

The whales are so rare that nobody has ever seen one alive.

This year scientists returned

to dig out the skeletons of the two whales, so they could study them.

It wasn't an easy task and

they found the mother's skull had been washed out to sea.

Previously, only skull

fragments have been discovered and that's only happened three times.

The spade-toothed beaked whale

The spade-toothed beaked whale

gets its name because males have wide, blade-like, tusk teeth.

Both males and females have

beaks which make them look like dolphins.

Not much is known about the

whales, except that they live in the South Pacific Ocean and eat mainly squid.