| Brief Description |
Black and white photograph of George Shepherd, curator of the Wanganui Public Museum, measuring the skull of Shepherd's Beaked Whale, Tasmacetus shepherdii. The photograph was taken in the Wanganui Public Museum where Shepherd was engaged in articulating the whale skeleton.
Curator George Shepherd was an extraordinary man who dedicated more than 30 years of his life to our Museum. He had a range of talents and was reputed to be a real gentleman. His renown rests, however, on his remarkable contribution to natural science, in particular, to the recognition of a rare beaked whale.
In 1933 a beaked whale was cast up on the beach at Ohawe, near Hawera. Its description as noted in the Hawera Star was greeted with great interest by Shepherd. The whale washed out to sea again, but when it was cast up again a month later, Shepherd visited the site and discovered it was a type of whale he had never seen before.
By this time the whale was in an advanced stage of decomposition but this did not deter Shepherd and his two assistants from recovering all the bones of the whale except one flipper, one scapula and many of the teeth.
The bones were packed up and sent to Whanganui where Shepherd spread them on the roof of the Museum to dry. There they remained for two years before he began the task of assembling the skeleton. As he progressed he became more and more certain he had found a new species of whale.
Dr R W B Oliver, Director of the Dominion Museum in Wellington inspected the skeleton and 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 and named it Tasmacetus shepherdi to honour George Shepherd. Oliver’s findings were published in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London in 1937.
At the 1937 Science Conference in Auckland Dr Oliver read his paper on the discovery of the whale. After the conference, many overseas scientists visited the Wanganui Museum to view the skeleton on display and to meet George Shepherd.
These whales are very rare. Since 1933 only 28 whales of this species have been washed ashore worldwide. Few live specimens have ever been sighted.
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