ABOVE: © MARKUS BÜHLER 2019
Every time Eline Lorenzen pushes open the basement door of the Natural History Museum of Denmark at the University of Copenhagen, a pungent scent of dust, whale blubber, and chemicals pummels her nose, the biologist tells The Scientist. Hundreds of skeletons and skulls are scattered about the room, but there’s one in particular that Lorenzen has been fixated on since she became the curator of the mammal collection at the museum in 2015. At first glance, the 30-year-old skull has features similar to the face and jaw bones of toothed whales such as narwhals and belugas. It has a row of chompers on the top and bottom jaws, just like a beluga’s. But, bizarrely, all of the teeth jut forward from the jaws, and the bottom row of teeth are twisted, spiraling leftward—just as a narwhal’s tusk does.
One of Lorenzen’s colleagues, narwhal researcher Mads ...
