Fig 1.
Baleen rack of specimen USNM 267999, an 11 m humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) collected in Western Australia, 1938.
Fig 2.
Archaeological baleen from Labrador.
Left: Strip and bristles from Avayalik-1 (JaDb-10, 49A). Right: Strip and bristles from Johannes Point (IbCq-1).
Fig 3.
Map of Labrador, Canada, modified from NordNordWest [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons, and showing the location of the archaeological sites where baleen was found, as shown in Fitzhugh, 1980 [71].
Table 1.
Details of specimens sampled and quantity of baleen analysed.
Table 2.
Sequences used for recalibration, with calculated m/z (C indicates Carbamidomethylation of the cysteine) and matched species: (i) Mysticeti species where peaks are observed with ≤ 0.02 Da error; and (ii) species matched by sequence homology using Blast (https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/).
Fig 4.
Mass spectra of four baleen specimens with main markers indicated, see Table 3 for colour references a) North Atlantic right whale (E. glacialis) 504257; b) sei whale (B. borealis) 504998; c) humpback whale (M. novaeangliae) 267999 and d) gray whale (E. robustus) 572613.
Table 3.
Main diagnostic markers identified by peptide mass fingerprinting in Balaenidae (North Pacific (NP) right, North Atlantic (NA) right and bowhead whales), Balaenopteridae (Bryde’s, sei, blue, minke, fin and humpback whales), and Eschrichtiidae (gray whale).
In gray and black are peaks found across families (in gray: all families and in black: Balaenopteridae and Eschrichtiidae), in green are balaenidae-only peaks (darker shade of green represents the right whales, and darkest green is for species-specific peaks), in blue are balaenopteridae-only peaks (darker shade of blue represents species-specific peaks), and in red are the eschrichtiidae-specific peaks. The—sign indicates the presence of a peak with relative intensity < 1%.
Fig 5.
Mass spectra between m/z 1800–2600 of the Bryde’s whales (B. brydei) showing subspecies markers a) North Atlantic specimen 504074; b) South Pacific specimen 504688; c) South Pacific specimen 504689.
Fig 6.
PMF of a) bowhead whale sample 571338; b) archaeological baleen, Dorset (Ava18); c) degraded archaeological baleen, Inuit (Joh49).