Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 January 1917 — Dinosaur of Ancient Days Mere Pygmy by Side of the Blue Whale of Modern Times [ARTICLE]

Dinosaur of Ancient Days Mere Pygmy by Side of the Blue Whale of Modern Times

It has been said that the first duty of a whale 4s to be large—the blue whale is, then, the most successful whale, for It is the largest creature which has ever'existed on the earth or in' its waters. Even those extinct giant reptiles, the dinosaurs, which splashed along the borders of the inland seas of Wyoming and Montana 3,000,000 years agoj'could not approach a blue whale either in length or weight, declares a writer in the New York' Independent. In 1903 a blue whale was weighed In sections in Newfoundland. The animal tvas 78 feet long, 35 feet around the shoulders, the head was 19 feet tn length and the tnH six feet from tip to tip. The total weight was 63 tons. The flesh weighed 40 tons, the blubber eight tons, the blood, viscera and baleen seven tons and the bones eight tons. Exaggerated accounts of the size-of blue whales are current even in reputable books on natural history, but the largest specimen which has yet been actually measured and recorded Is-187 feet- long, stranded a few years agoupon the coa.St of New Zealand; it must have weighed at least 75 tons.