ashamed of ourselves.
19th-Century Weapon Found in Whale
from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)
BOSTON -- A 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month
had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it survived a
similar hunt -- more than a century ago. Embedded deep under its blubber
was a 3 1/2-inch arrow-shaped projectile that has given researchers
insight
into the whale's age, estimated between 115 and 130 years old.
"No other finding has been this precise," said John Bockstoce, an
adjunct
curator of the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Calculating a whale's age
can be
difficult, and is usually gauged by amino acids in the eye lenses. It's
rare to find one that has lived more than a century, but experts say the
oldest were close to 200 years old.
The bomb lance fragment, lodged in a bone between the whale's neck and
shoulder blade, was likely manufactured in New Bedford, on the southeast
coast of Massachusetts, a major whaling center at that time, Bockstoce
said. It was probably shot at the whale from a heavy shoulder gun around
1890.
To read more:
http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/
2007/06/12/19th_century_weapon_found_in_whale/
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