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A relic of a bygone age, this whale skull is a sad
reminder of Signy's history. Look at the size of the thing! The
skull is more or less upside down, the part sticking upwards has been
broken off, that would be the part that formed the top part of the head,
the rostrum, from which the baleen plates hung, it would have originally
been 2-3 times as long as it is in this picture.
The beaches on the east coast of Signy, particularly
near to the base are littered with pieces of whalebone, many of them
small and unrecogniseable other than as whalebone. This skull has been
washed ashore and so hasn't been eroded by the sea, other recogniseable
pieces, particularly of vertebrae were either also washed ashore beyond
the reach of the sea or could be found while diving, under the sea but
pretty much unmoved for decades.
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