Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin (ISSN 0178 – 6288) . Number 130, October 2015, pp. 1-18. | Page 3

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Four Whale skeletons are displayed at Hamad Mohammad Al-Atiqi (Museum
Director 1972-1988) Hall or the Skeletons Hall. The first and biggest skeleton is
the 24-meters Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus Linnaeus, 1758) which was
found stranded on Kazma (Kadmah) shore in Kuwait in 1963 (Khalaf, June 1987,
August 2015).
The Second is a skeleton of a Blue Whale which was found stranded on AlKhwaisat area between Kazma and Al-Doha in Kuwait on 10.10.1976, with a
length of 6.5 meters.
The third is a skeleton of a Blue Whale with a length of 10.5 meters which was
stranded on the Kuwaiti Umm Al-Maradem Island on Thursday 23.03.1978
(Khalaf, June 1987).
The fourth is a skeleton of a False Killer Whale (Pseudorca crassidens Owen, 1846);
but there is no any information about its origin.

Museum Information Sign: The 10.5-meters Blue Whale was found on Umm AlMaradem Island shore in Kuwait on 23.03.1978. Photo by: Prof. Dr. Norman Ali Bassam
Khalaf-von Jaffa at the Educational Science Museum in Kuwait. 24.06.2014.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/50022881@N00/14485133407/
I would like to mention that there is a big possibility that the smaller size whales
were wrong identified by the museum officials; and they are probably Fin
Whales (Balaenoptera physalus Linnaeus, 1758) and not Blue Whales, simply
Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin – Number 130 – October 2015