Fin whale ( Balaenoptera physalus ) bones from a 5850 year old shell midden on San Miguel Island, California, USA

• Main Authors: Erlandson, Jon M., DeLong, Robert L., Robertson, Kelly M.
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln 2020
• Subjects: Cetaceans; aDNA; historical ecology; whale bone artifacts; California Channel Islands; San Miguel; Balaenoptera physalus; Fin whale
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/usdeptcommercepub/631; https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/context/usdeptcommercepub/article/1620/viewcontent/Erlandson_JICA_2022_Fin_whale.pdf

Large cetaceans were heavily impacted by commercial whaling, so relatively little is known about their biogeography prior to historic times. On California’s Channel Islands, maritime peoples hunted dolphins and porpoises for millennia, but ethnohistoric data suggest that larger cetaceans were not...