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NOTES ON THE SKELETON OF SIBBALD'S RORQUAL 

 IN THE HULL MUSEUM. 



THOMAS SHEPPARD, F.G.S., 



■ Curator of the Municipal Museum at Hull ; 

 Secretary of the Hull Scientific and Field Naturalists' Club, and of the Geological 

 Section of the Yorkshire Naturalists Union. 



The skeleton of the Whale, which for many years has formed 

 the chief attraction in the Museum of the Literary and Philo- 

 sophical Society at Hull, now taken over by the Corporation, is 

 a specimen of the greatest possible interest and scientific value. 

 It is not a Whale of the ordinary type by any means, having 

 many striking differences, which are of such importance that 

 they hav.e been sufficient to indicate a species not previously 

 described, and the name first given to it was Physalas (Rorqualus) 

 sibbaldii Gray. 



The animal was washed up near the mouth of the Humber in 

 1835, and measured 55 feet in length when found. The length 

 of the skeleton is 47^2 feet ; its head is 10)^ feet long ; it has 

 64 vertebrae, and 32 ribs. The upper jaws contain 580 fanons or 

 'whalebones.' Examples of the same species have since been 

 found as much as 80 or even 85 feet long, this being the 

 maximum length attained by any animal. 



The first description of the specimen that the writer has been 

 able to trace appears from the pen of Dr. j. E. Gray, F.R.S., 

 a recognised authority on the Cetacea. This is in a paper ' On 

 the Finner Whales, with the Description of a New Species,' 

 which was read to the Zoological Society of London on the 

 8th of June 1847, and is printed in that Society's ' Proceedings,' 

 Part 15, for 1847, pp. 88-93. Dr. Gray points out that Whales 

 differ greatly from one another in the degree of mobility of the 

 neck, as is well shown in the union or separation of the cervical 

 vertebrae, and in the variations in the development of the lateral 

 and spinose processes of these neck vertebrae. In the Whale 

 in the Hull Museum all the cervical, or neck vertebrae are well 

 developed and separate one from another. In certain species 

 of Whales (small examples of some of which, e.g., the Bottle 

 Nose Whale, Hyperoodon rostratas Bell, are represented in the 

 Hull collection) all the cervical vertebrae are united and form 

 practically one bone. This union of the bones appears to 

 take place at an early period in the life of the animal, as is 

 shown by the skeletons of very young individuals. Dr. Gray's 



1901 August 2. 



