Weapon dates whale up to 130 years

WASHINGTON - Inupiat Eskimos hunting from seal skin canoes off the Alaskan coast have discovered a weapon fragment embedded in the neck of a whale, revealing that it survived a similar hunt by their ancestors more than 100 years ago.

The hunting party caught the 50-tonne bowhead whale from an umiaq, a large vessel like a longboat made from sealskin. They found a 9cm arrow-shaped projectile embedded in its blubber, with notches on the side - enabling researchers to estimate the whale's age at between 115 and 130 years old. Alaskan hunters traditionally carved notches into lance heads used in 19th-century hunts. The lance fragments had similar notches.

The oldest any whale can live is thought to be about 200 years.

- INDEPENDENT