An orca species that helped humans hunt whales for thousands of years may now be extinct, new research reveals

• An orca species that hunted alongside humans for thousands of years is likely locally extinct.
• The finding is thanks to DNA analysis of a 100-year-old skeleton and knowledge from the Thaua people.
• Orcas swam alongside Thaua hunters and led them to whales for thousands of years.

For thousands of years, the Thaua people — members of the Yuin nation in eastern Australia — had an exceptional whale hunting strategy, a new study in the peer-reviewed Journal of Heredity described.