A PREHISTORIC WHALE.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3364, 17 December 1919, Page 5

A PREHISTORIC WHALE.

. ___________.______,________ , TWO MILLION YEARS OLD. i .. . I The fossil beds in the Wynyagrd Bluff, Tasmania, which h'3.Ve already been shown many times to be the rest'- i ing: place of the bones of rare extinct? animals, have again yielded up one of ith-Ose scientific treasures which only i occasionally come into tilg possession of a public institution (says the Laun-I ceston Examiner). The fossil whale 1 which was obtained lately by Professor Flynn, -of the Tasmanian Univer-I sity, and thought in its uncleansed f condition, to belong to lthe interesting‘ group of beaked whales, has now been taken to Hobart, and the greater por-i tion of the covering rock has been re-I moved. It has been found to be muchi more valuable and rare than at firsti supposed. In fact the specimen isi absolu'tely unique. It is one individual: of a race of whales long extinct, in which some of the teeth were serrlated ilike those of a. shark. A few teeth of‘ these whales have from time to time been found in various deposits in Australia; but never bef-ore has the complelte skull been ‘obtained. This unique specimen is closely allied to a whale Prosqualdon, of which two very i much broken skulls were found in certain tertiary beds Of Patagonia. One of the skulls is in the British museum, the other in the Museum of La Plrzta. Besides the -skull_, Professor Flynn was able to obtain the skelel-ton of the arm, a number of ribs and vertebrae, the breastbone, the bones of the ear, and i some others. It is very narely that it is possible to obtain so much material ‘from a, fossil skeleton of this ski-nd, can be reckoned as not less two million years. i