Analysis: Mysterious evolution of wonky whale skulls revealed by new study

PhD student Ellen Coombs (UCL Biosciences and Natural History Museum) discusses a new study on 'wonky' whale skulls, explaining that whales have evolved increasingly asymmetrical skulls and discusses the likely reasons for this. Some whales are wonky. You might not know it to look at them, but their skulls are actually incredibly asymmetrical. This mysterious feature helps with echolocation, the way that whales work out where things are by making sounds and sensing how they are reflected back. But this wonkiness isn't present in all whales. My colleagues and I recently conducted research to find out why and when wonky whales started to evolve in a different way to their symmetrical cousins. We now know wonky whale skulls first appeared around 30 million years ago, and that they continued to become even more asymmetrical as the creatures evolved into the modern species we know today.