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Japan says it found rare whale species |
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| JAPAN: December 27, 2002 | ||
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TOKYO - A whale that died after drifting ashore in southwestern Japan five months ago was a very rare species, Japanese experts said yesterday.
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Researchers at the National Science Museum in Tokyo said the 6.5-metre-long (21 ft) female whale stranded on the coast in Sendai on Japan's southwestern main island of Kyushu in July was identified as a Longman's beaked whale. It was the first discovery of the whale species in Japan and the seventh in the world, they said. The researchers took several months to identify the whale after conducting DNA tests on the skeleton and tissue samples. They said the DNA sequences of epidermal tissue matched those of a specimen preserved at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. "Little is known yet about the rare whale," an official at the National Science Museum said.
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REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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