To which Glenn responded:
>The skeleton has been there for around 30 years and is not covered nor is it
>decayed. National Public Radio the other day had an interview with an author
>of a book entitled Aftermath. He claimed that there were still 160,000
>skeletons in uniforms from World War I in the northern part of the Russian
>plains. I am going to have to get that book. That is 70 years and the
>skeletons haven't disappeared. They are awaiting slow burial. :-)
Glenn, there is a difference between a petrified skeleton's resistence to
weathering (which may equal that of stone) and the time during which a
decaying whale can remain intact and articulated. The former can indeed be
years given protection from vandals. The latter cannot. Disarticulation,
if not hastened by predators is inevitable and rapid. While I cannot give
you exact figures for whales, the rates of disarticulation of other
vertebrates are well known under a variety of circumstances, and except for
dessication (not likely a factor in this case), they are less than a year if
undisturbed, and in some cases a week or less. Any textbook on taphonomy
will deal with these figures. Leonard Brand has done considerable work on
this and gave a paper at GSA last year summarizing a lot of that work.
Art
http://chadwicka.swac.edu