The recovered skeleton will be degreased, cleaned, inventoried – each bone will be numbered – and finally packaged, to integrate the collection of marine mammals of the Parisian museum. This is the first complete skeleton of the species Orcinus orca.
An orca at the museum! “This is a rare and precious opportunity,” says the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN). The Parisian establishment of Ve arrondissement announced in a press release on Tuesday, June 14, that the female killer whale recently found in the Seine will enter its collections.
Sick, she was found dead on May 30 by the NGO Sea Shepherd and the autopsy was carried out the next day in the presence of members of the institution. Following this “exceptional collection“, the Museum indicates that”the recovered skeleton will be degreased, cleaned, inventoried (each bone will be numbered) and finally packaged, to integrate the collection of marine mammals“. It’s about “first complete skeleton of the species Orcinus orca”, he points out.
For several days, the killer whale wandered in the Seine and its vital prognosis worried the specialists. After the failure of a rescue operation, the prefecture of Normandy and Seine-Maritime decided to euthanize him in order to “to put an end to the suffering suffered by the orca, and to carry out in-depth analyzes on the pathology”. But a few days later, the cetacean was found dead.
The National Museum of Natural History holds one of the three largest naturalist collections in the world. Collected for 400 years, it has 67 million specimens – animals, plants, minerals.
SEE ALSO – She was to be euthanized, the orca in difficulty in the Seine was found dead