A Whale of a Hybrid

In my 2006 book Shadows of Existence, I wrote:

".. the skull from a whale killed in Greenland in 1986 or 1987 appears to be evidence of a hybrid between the two known monodonts, the beluga and the narwhal. The skull was spotted in 1990 by Mads P. Heide-Jorgensen of the Greenland Fisheries Research Institute.  It was sitting on the roof of a tool shed in the settlement of Kitsissuarsuit. The skull belonged to a hunter named Jens Larsen.  Larsen had who killed three identical whales, one of which produced the mystery skull.   He recalled that the animals seemed very strange to him.  They were a uniform gray color, showing neither the distinctive white of a beluga nor the mottled back of a narwhal.  Their tails looked like a narwhal's, with their distinctive fan-shaped flukes and convex trailing edges.  Their broad pectoral flippers, though,  resembled a beluga’s.  While these cetaceans had no horns, analysis of the skull indicated two teeth showed growth patterns resembling the spirals of a narwhal tusk.  These teeth may have protruded outside the mouth."
Now we know more - a lot more.  New techniques for imaging the skull and reconstructing the head, plus DNA evidence, have led to a complete picture of this enigmatic cetacean.  
UPDATE: Scientist and artist Markus Buhler has kindly given permission to add his reconstruction of the "narluga."   Below is the link to his post explaining how he did it.

Narluga by Markus Buhler. Used by permission. No reuse unless cleared by the artist. 

The parents: Narwhal and Beluga. 

The skull, as the New York Times' JoAnna Klein wrote, ""belonged to an adult, first generation son of a narwhal mother and beluga father. " As to those teeth: Dr. Eline Lorenzen said, “It’s like if you took 50-percent beluga and 50-percent narwhal and shoved their teeth in a blender, that’s what would come out.” 

So welcome the "narluga."