New Whale Bones at Museum

The museum was gifted 3 humpback whale bones this week through a donation by Joe Ransone of Wake. His father Carl Ransone, Sr. found them in the mid 1970’s in Wake on the banks of the Rappahannock River, near Bushy Park.   

These bones will join our exhibit of marine life including other whale bones. Middlesex’ geographic location is along the migratory path of the humpback whale. As the humpbacks migrate south from their home in the cold waters off Greenland down to the West Indies to breed and calve, they would stop off in the food-rich waters at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Here the whales dine on small fish such as menhaden and bait fish found in our waters. Some explore up the bay and along the rivers.

The museum has many whale fossils as well as a set of shoulder and flipper bones donated to the museum in the 1970s. These bones were found at the mouth of the Rappahannock River by a local fisherman when they got caught in his nets.

The museum has a nice collection of fossils and skeletal bones of a variety of animals that have lived here on our peninsula in Middlesex. It is one of the favorite sections of our museum for visitors young and old.

This area of the Chesapeake was underwater multiple times during the last 25,000,000 years so we also have a very nice collection of aquatic fossils including megalodon shark’s teeth and a variety of large corals. This fossil collection also includes dinosaur bones.

For more information about Humpback Whales visit: 

https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/humpback-whale