The Beaked Whales of the Family Ziphiidae: An Account of the Beaked Whales of the Family Ziphiidae in the Collection of the United States Museum...True, Frederick W. (Frederick William)
Science
The Beaked Whales of the Family Ziphiidae: An Account of the Beaked Whales of the Family Ziphiidae in the Collection of the United States Museum...
True, Frederick W. (Frederick William)
Beaked whales
Herewith I enclose a stereograph of a head of a member of the whale
family, which I made at Yaquina Bay, Oregon. The animal was 17 feet
long, with fluked tail, soft, smooth skin, blowhole on top of head, and
two tusks in the mandible, but no [other] teeth in the mouth. The tusks
are thin and apparently hollow. Length of head, 32 inches; width, 14
inches; height, 11 inches; blowhole, 5 inches. Eyes low on head. Width
of mandible [jaw] at end: Upper, 1½ inches; lower, 1¾ inches. Width
between tusks, 3 inches. The blubber was about 2 inches thick on the
head. It went ashore about the 15th of February, 1½ miles south of the
life-saving station on South Beach, 2½ miles south of Newport, Oregon.
The head had been severed before I arrived.
A clipping from the _Oregonian_ newspaper contains the following:
Albany, Oregon, March 2 [1904]. A peculiar specimen of the whale
variety has been reported on the Oregon coast, near Newport. J. G.
Crawford, of Albany, has just returned from a trip to Newport, where he
made a picture of the head of the strange animal. The body was washed
upon the beach during the recent storm which swept the coast. It is
about 15 feet long. * * * Residents of the vicinity say they have never
seen anything like it on the Oregon coast. * * * On either side of the
mouth are two villainous-looking tusks several inches in length. They
are at the back of the mouth, and extend up to a level with the top of
the upper jaw. They are very wide and flat, squared on top. The mouth
has no other teeth. * * *
The head is equipped with a blowhole, like that of a whale. The eyes
are very low, almost underneath the lower jaws.
The body is in a good state of preservation, the flesh having been torn
but little by the birds.
On receipt of the foregoing information, letters were immediately
addressed to Mr. Crawford and also to the keeper of the life-saving
station at South Beach, Capt. Otto Wellander, asking that, if possible,
the entire skeleton be preserved. Captain Wellander replied that the
whale had not been dead long when washed ashore; that he had tried to
find the body, but that the high tides had either carried it away or
buried it under driftwood.
The skull when cleaned passed into the possession of Mr. J. G. Crawford,
who sent to the Museum some excellent photographs of it, and also of the
head before the flesh had been removed. Later he sent the skull itself to
the Museum for my examination, and finally very generously presented it
to the Museum in exchange.
The skull is that of an adult individual, in nearly perfect condition,
with the mandible and teeth. The parts missing are the left malar, the
left tympanic bone, the distal ends of the pterygoids and the proximal
ends of the premaxillæ. (Pl. 3, fig. 2.)
SKULL.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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