| Brief Description |
This is a complete articulated skull and skeleton of an adult Tasmacetus shepherd, known as Shepherd's Beaked Whale. This rare whale was first identified in 1933 by Wanganui Public Museum curator George Shepherd and the skeleton became the first recorded specimen and holotype.
The whale corpse washed ashore at Ohawe near Hawera on 7 November 1933, and was recovered by George Sheperd who realised it was a type of whale he had never seen before. As he progressed with drying the bones and articulating the skeleton he became more and more certain he had found a new species. Dr R W B Oliver, Director of the Dominion Museum in Wellington, came to Wanganui to inspect the skeleton. He confirmed Shepherd's discovery: that the whale's extra teeth and nine pairs of ribs distinguished it from all other whales. He described the new species, naming it after George Shepherd, in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London in 1937.
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