For decades, there were tales from fishermen and tourists, even lots of photos, of a mysterious killer whale that just didn’t look like all the others, but scientists had never seen one.

Now they have.

An international team of researchers says they found a couple dozen of these distinctly different orcas roaming in the oceans off southern Chile in January. Scientists are waiting for DNA tests from a tissue sample but think it may be a distinct species.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration felt confident enough to trumpet the discovery of the long rumoured killer whale on Thursday. Some outside experts were more cautious, acknowledging the whales are different, but saying they’d wait for the test results to answer the species question.