Museum’s whale jawbone, dumped at sea, is back on show again

A rare whale jawbone that was fished out of the Oosterschelde estuary a year ago turns out to have been dumped there after the closure of the museum where it had been exhibited.

Marine biologist Bas van der Sanden found the three-metre-long bone in February 2025, near the Zeelandbrug. He immediately noticed the bone was white and clean, something that is not the case with bones that have been in the water for a long time, he told local media outlet PZC.

The bone, it turned out, had already been treated to preserve it, and when a subsequent DNA test showed the bone to belong to an Omura’s whale, a non-native species, his suspicions that it had already been on display were confirmed.

The truth finally emerged following a lecture by Van der Sanden about the mysterious bone at a divers’ convention when he was contacted by a former worker at the Zoological Museum in Amsterdam.

The museum closed its doors in 2011 and much of its collection went to Naturalis in Leiden. But when some bones threatened to end up on the scrapheap, the man took them home and placed the huge jawbone behind the sofa.

When he moved to a smaller house, he no longer had room for the bone but because he had no paperwork, there was little he could do with it officially.

He and another former museum worker then decided to dump the bone in the Oosterschelde so it could be officially “found” and registered again, which is exactly what happened.

“It was a carefully thought-out plan and it worked,” Van der Sanden said during a presentation. The bone will now be used for educational purposes.

Van der Sanden said he could see the funny side. “What they did is not illegal. There was no theft. The museum world would probably give them a mild telling off, with a smile, of course,” he said.