Whale Bones/Carcass ID
Posted by Conscious-Airport-86@reddit | whales | View on Reddit | 2 comments
Stumbled on this while backpacking out on the shoreline of Olympic National Park this weekend, deep in the wilderness. A large collection of bones: lots of ribs, vertebrae, maybe a skull? Also a big piece of soft tissue: Maybe a pectoral fin? It looked like a ball/socket on one end and phalanges on the other. All in all, hard to tell how long it had been there. But whatever it was, it’s big. Any guesses?
Conscious-Airport-86@reddit (OP)
This is Olympic National Park, so the Pacific Coast of Washington State. Things were pretty spread out so I don’t have a shot from far back where you can see much, but here’s a vertebrae with some scale. The skull was 3 to 4 feet around. About 13 seconds into the video, you can see some phalanges as well, which I assume are from a pectoral fin, but I’m not sure if there’s enough to help identify it from those.
TesseractToo@reddit
Would be nice to see some backup shots of the whole thing from a bit more distance so we could get a size estimate but my unprofessional guess is humpback (they have a wise skull in proportion to other baleen whales) but enough is missing I could be way off. It looks like a baleen whale, it's small so might be a minke or gray (if this is Pacific)
The skull is upside down so those areas are not the eyes they are the cheekbones
If there was a limb it would be easier to tell but it does look like a baleen whale
Where is this?
This is the angle you are seeing but a lot more is broken off on your whale
https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/candelabra-of-the-andes-paracas-candelabra-gm1203298576-345789866?searchscope=image%2Cfilm