An Eerie Mummified Dolphin Washed Up On A Beach, Leaving Scientists Scratching Their Heads
Earlier this year, beachgoers in South Carolina happened to stumble upon a dolphin skeleton lying in the sand, where it may have been drying out in the sun for months. The dolphin may have accidentally gotten stranded on the beach.
The eerie find was like something out of a marine mystery novel, and it had scientists scratching their heads. The beached dolphin was surprisingly well-preserved, raising the question of how it managed to evade scavengers.
The Lowcountry Marine Mammal Network (LMMN) received a call on January 14 about a “mummified dolphin” near Hilton Head Island.
Officials visited the site to analyze and collect samples from the body before burying it on the beach. The dolphin was most likely a bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) and was about eight feet long.
The body was leathery and hard. The organs were missing, so it was unclear how old the dolphin was, and impossible to tell whether it was male or female.
“It wasn’t actually mummified,” said Amber Kuehn, a marine biologist and coordinator of the Hilton Head Island Sea Turtle Patrol. “It was simply decomposed.”
If the corpse had been fresher, experts would’ve performed an autopsy, opened up the stomach, and conducted a toxicology report.
At the time of its discovery, the level of decomposition of the dolphin carcass was strangely high. It was likely several weeks old. However, one expert believed the remains were months old.
According to Erich Hoyt, a research fellow at Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) in the United Kingdom, the corpse appeared to have been completely dried out due to its exposure to the sun. He also noted that it was odd that the body had desiccated to such an extent while staying fully intact.
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Usually, remains of this sort would have been stripped bare by scavengers. For instance, another bottlenose dolphin body was found near Botany Bay on Edisto Island a day before the well-preserved corpse was discovered. It was also decomposed, but it was heavily scavenged.
The mummified dolphin may have dried out elsewhere before washing up on the shores at Hilton Head Island, but this is difficult to confirm.
In all of coastal South Carolina, about 50 to 60 dead dolphins wash up per year. Hilton Head Island sees about 10 to 15 per year.
A specific bottlenose dolphin behavior could explain how the two dolphins ended up on beaches. In South Carolina, small groups of bottlenose dolphins have been spotted dragging small fish onto land, allowing them to pick off the helpless prey.
But if an individual ventures too far onto land, they could become stranded and die before drying out in the sun. Hoyt emphasized that this is just one theory, and there is no evidence of it happening.
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