Cetaceans

Long time since I posted something, but I guessed some of you might like to see some new projects I started with last weekend. This post will contain some graphic pictures, so you're hereby warned!

Recently a white beaked dolphin had washed ashore in southern Norway and was taken care of by the local natural history museum. They also had a harbour porpoise in the freezer and decided to get their skeletons cleaned for display. So last weekend I traveled there and cleaned both animals together with the museums taxidermist. The dolphin measures 3 meter (10 ft) and the porpoise 1,5 meter (4,9 ft). Here are some pics of the animals and some skinning/fleshing.

Transport to the cleaning facility at the veterinary school.


White beaked dolphin


Skinning and fleshing. It's slippery business but we cleaned it pretty fast in only a couple of hours. Surprisingly no plastic was found in the stomach, which was empty except for some parasites.


Harbour porpoise

 

Some more pictures:

Porpoise teeth, lower jaw up.


White beaked dolphin skull, debraining.


White beaked dolphin teeth, two decided to fit in together between the opposite teeth.


White beaked dolphin skull.


White beaked dolphin skull. The eyes are left in during transport to secure and support the thin zygomatic arch.

 

I also got to clean and articulate a golden eagle and a gyrfalcon. Both were too far gone for taxidermy but will make nice skeletons. The gyrfalcon was really disgusting but worth to save since it had data and a foot ring.

Golden eagle


Gyrfalcon, probably more biomass in the form of maggots than falcon...


Gyrfalcon