The gray whale (Eschrichtius
robustus – see above) is today only found in the north Pacific Ocean, yet skeletal
remains have been found in the eastern Atlantic [1]. Indeed, Gray named the
genus [2] from a cervical vertebra that bore a very close resemblance to vertebrae
of an “imperfect skeleton” discovered in Sweden. This vertebra was sent to Gray
by William Pengelly FRS of Torquay (see below), a distinguished palaeontologist
and famous for his excavations of local cave fauna, especially those of Kent’s Cavern,
This is what Pengelly wrote [3]:
A few years ago, but the exact
date has escaped me, there was brought to my house [“Lavorna”] a large bone
which had been washed ashore on Babbicombe beach [the old spelling], near
Torquay. It was not difficult to see that it was part of the vertebral column
of a cetacean, and that it had undergone considerable abrasion. That, however,
which chiefly arrested my attention was the fact that such parts of its surface
as were unrubbed were covered with a darkish stain, from which the abraded
parts were free: a fact which led me to conclude that the stain was
superinduced.
The staining reminded Pengelly of that on bones from
deposits formed from a submerged forest within the current Torbay [4] and which
had subsequently become flooded. These deposits contained the bones of deer and
other terrestrial animals, but whales clearly could not have existed here. Radiocarbon
dating of the vertebra, and two others that were also collected from Babbacombe
Bay, just to the north of Torbay (see above), showed the bones to be 340 ± 260 years old – very recent compared
to the submerged forests and thus likely to have become stained by falling on
to the sediments. It is presumed that there was a population of gray whales in
the eastern Atlantic until the 17th Century [1], but how the Babbacome vertebrae
came to be washed ashore remains a mystery. The bones are large (the one illustrated
below being 41 cm across) and that only adds to all the questions as to their
origins. Perhaps gray whales were regular visitors to Babbacombe Bay and Torbay?
Perhaps the bones were thrown overboard from a ship returning from the Pacific
with unusual mementoes? Who knows?
[1] P.J.Bryant (1995) Dating remains of gray whales from the
eastern North Atlantic. Journal of
Mammalogy 76: 857-861.
[2] J.E.Gray (1865) Notice of a new whalebone whale from the
coast of Devonshire, proposed to be called
Eschrichtius robustus. Proceedings of
the Zoological Society of London pages 40-43.
[3] W.Pengelly (1865) On cetacean remains washed ashore at
Babbicombe, South Devon. Report and
Transactions of the Devonshire Association 1(iv): 86-89.
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