NOTES 
Notes on Three Beaked Whales from the Aleutian Islands 
On June 6, 1947, in the company of a shore 
party from the motorship "Black Douglas/’ I 
discovered the putrid carcass of a male Ziphius 
cavnostris on the northeast side of Samalga 
Island, Aleutian Islands, Alaska. From this car- 
cass, which was about 19 feet long, I recovered 
a portion of the right mandible, the symphisial 
region of both mandibles, and a portion of the 
mesorostral ossification. Dr. Remington Kellogg 
has kindly identified the remains and has placed 
them in the U. S. National Museum as Specimen 
No. 276,022 (original No. VBS 1371). 
On November 12, 1947, I visited Amchitka 
Island, in the western Aleutians, and was told 
by Elmer C. Hanson that the body of a small 
whale had appeared on the beach near Constan- 
tine Harbor some months before. The waves 
pounded the body to pieces, but Mr. Hanson 
saved one tooth. In a letter of March 18, 1948, 
Dr. Remington Kellogg writes that "the large 
flattened tooth which is broken off above the 
base belonged to some species of Mesoplodon. 
It is not sufficiently complete for precise identi- 
fication.” 
To the best of my knowledge, not over ten 
skulls or fragmentary specimens of Berardius 
bandit Stejneger have been preserved. These 
have been collected around the rim of the north 
Pacific from Santa Cruz, California, and Tokyo 
Bay, Japan, on the south to the Pribilof and 
Commander Islands on the north. Through the 
kindness of Henry Swanson, I am able to add a 
recent specimen, the skull of a subadult of un- 
known sex, which is now in the U. S. National 
Museum, Biological Surveys Collection, Speci- 
men No. 3343 IX (original No. BDM 294). 
In the fall of 1948 Aleut natives saw the 
carcass of this specimen stranded on the beach 
about 5 miles from the village of Unalaska. I 
tried to recover it in November but could not 
land on account of a heavy surf. Mr. Swanson 
subsequently chopped off the head and sent it to 
Seattle, where it arrived on December 18, 1948. 
Fig. 1. Skull of Baird beaked whale from Una- 
laska, Alaska. Above, dorsal view; below, left 
mandible, anterior portion, outer face, showing the 
two teeth. (Scale applies to lower figure only.) 
(Photographs No. 2493 and 2495.) 
Sea gulls, ravens, and foxes had torn at the flesh 
over a period of several months, with the result 
that the original contour of the head was lost. 
Karl W. Kenyon and I cleaned the skull in 
boiling dilute sodium hydroxide, and found that 
it measured 1,043 mm. in greatest length, and 
537 mm. in greatest breadth (Fig. 1). 
Berardius bairdii normally has four teeth, two 
in each half of the lower jaw. In my specimen 
the larger, foremost tooth of the pair is firmly 
rooted while the smaller, hindmost one can be 
easily picked out with the fingers. — -Victor B. 
Scheffer , U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 
Seattle, W as hingt on. 
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