Beached whale bones are treasure trove of knowledge for museum collection

It may not be the kind of treasure most people dream of digging up on a beach but to researcher Catherine Kemper, finding whale bones is almost as exciting as gold. "In this case, having some bones has confirmed to me that this was quite a young whale, because I know from looking at these bones that they're not fully formed." "It'll take a few months to get all the yucky, stinky stuff off them," Dr Kemper said. "Then we'll double check that they are the right whale bones by comparing them with existing bones and they'll be registered into our collection." "But say something happens to those tissues — maybe something goes wrong with the 'fridge — you can take a sample from the internal part of these bones and look at the DNA."