It is the world’s rarest whale, with only seven of its kind ever spotted. Almost nothing is known about the species. But on Monday a group of scientists and experts in New Zealand clustered around a near-perfectly preserved spade-toothed whale hoping to decode decades of mystery. “I can’t tell you how extraordinary it is,” said a joyful Anton van Helden, senior marine science adviser for New Zealand’s conservation agency, who gave the spade-toothed whale its name. Van Helden has studied beaked whales for 35 years, but Monday was the first time he participated in a dissection of the spade-toothed variety. 

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