McGill curator investigates 10,000-year-old whale bones found in Ontario

A museum curator in Montreal is working to piece together a mystery about ancient whale bones found hundreds of kilometres from any modern ocean.

It’s not every day a museum curator becomes a detective, but that’s exactly what Anthony Howell of McGill’s Redpath Museum found himself doing.

He’s on the trail of a 10,000-year-old humpback whale fossil found hundreds of kilometres from any modern ocean.

The mystery began with a tip from Ayden Tucker, a museum assistant in Smiths Falls, Ont. Tucker had stumbled upon an old reference to whale bones found near the town in the late 1800s.

“The lore was that there were humpback whale bones in Smiths Falls. It became a bit of a folk story,” Howell said.

According to records, the bones were donated to the Redpath Museum in 1882 by a Canadian Pacific Railway superintendent.

Howell, the curator of Natural History at the Redpath Museum, began his investigation by searching the museum’s database, but found no record of the bones.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean we don’t have it,” he explained. “It just means I have to dig a bit further.”

Unearthing the past

His persistence paid off. After a careful search, Howell eventually found two large vertebrae and a piece of a rib tucked away in the paleontology collection.

The measurements recorded in archival documents were a perfect fit.

“From what I can tell, they’re the same texture, they’re the same colour, they’re likely from the same location, and possibly from the same animal,” Howell said.

Howell and Tucker believe the bones belong to a humpback whale that once lived in the Champlain Sea, an ancient inland body of water that covered much of what is now southern Ontario and Quebec following the last Ice Age. If their theory is correct, it would make the bones between 10,000 and 12,000 years old.

The bones were originally donated by A. Baker, a Canadian Pacific Railway superintendent. CP surveyors often recorded geological finds as they built the transcontinental line.

“It’s entirely possible there are more records in CP’s archives, or even in local papers or societies,” said Howell.

The next steps in the investigation

To solve the mystery, Howell is now collaborating with colleagues in McGill’s Zoology and Wildlife Biology departments to identify the species.

“If we can confirm they’re humpback whale bones, that would be a huge step forward,” he said.

He is also combing through railway archives, newspaper clippings, institutional records, and the writings of John William Dawson, McGill’s principal in the 1880s and the founding director of the Redpath Museum.

“Sometimes, the most helpful thing is the dialogue around the specimens; what’s been said or written about them over time,” Howell explained.

While the investigation may not produce definitive answers, Howell said the process itself is invaluable.

“This is the fun part of working in a museum,” he said. “It’s about understanding better what we actually have in our collections, so we can make them more accessible for future research.”

He added that projects like this help reconnect institutions across time and geography.

“A lot of these museums in Canada used to exist as a network,” Howell said. “Every time I get a request like this, it’s like we’re reestablishing a connection. And if it turns out we can confirm what these bones are, it opens a new door for research into the Champlain Sea Basin.”