Earth's earliest dolphins were toothless, a metre long, whiskered

Paris

SCIENTISTS on Wednesday unveiled an extinct species of toothless, whiskered mini-dolphin that plied Earth's oceans some 30 million years ago.

With only a fossilised cranium - found in a river near Charleston, South Carolina - to work with, the researchers were able to reconstruct the snub-nosed mammal's evolutionary saga, describe its facial features and figure out what it snacked on.