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Old KM papers stuffed in whale
The skeleton of a blue whale which was beached in Ireland 125 years ago was being held together with copies of the Kent Messenger from the 1930s.
The specimen was bought by the Natural History Museum and first went on display in 1938, where it hung from the ceiling for several decades.
The 25m-long skeleton is now being moved to the London museum’s main hall.
While staff were moving the exhibit they discovered a number of copies of the Kent Messenger were used to hold bones together, with the 1932 Christmas Eve edition packing out intervertebral discs.
A museum spokesman said: “Various issues of the Kent Messenger have been discovered in the ‘stuffing’ of our iconic blue whale skeleton.
“Workmen on site clearly had connections to the county and perhaps even intended creating this time capsule for the modern museum to eventually uncover.
“As our conservators have carefully deinstalled the specimen, in preparation for its arrival in Hintze Hall in 2017, the plaster of Paris-like material that was used to conjoin the fragile bones in the 1930s has unveiled its secrets.”
The Hintze Hall has been home to the skeleton of Dippy the Diplodocus for 35 years.
From 1910 to 1979, it housed elephants alongside changing display cabinets, and before that a sperm whale skeleton stood in the hall.
The blue whale, which was bought by the museum for £250 in 1891, will be reconstructed from January until April and will be the centrepiece of a new display exploring the link between humans and animals.
Sir Michael Dixon, the museum’s director, said: “As the largest-known animal to have ever lived on Earth, the story of the blue whale reminds us of the scale of our responsibility to the planet.
“This makes it the perfect choice of specimen to capture the imagination of our visitors, as well as marking a major transformation of the museum.”
From early 2018, Dippy, who is between 145 million to 156 million years old and 68.8ft long, will go on tour around the UK.