One of the rarest whales in the world was not a victim of extensive whaling as previously supposed. Fewer than 350 North Atlantic right whales remain, with the blame for their demise laid at the harpoon tips of 16th and 17th century whalers.
But a new study of ancient whale bones confirms the population of northern right whales has for centuries been small with a limited genetic diversity. That strongly suggests a mass cull of the animals never took place.
One researcher, Dr Moira Brown, now at the New England Aquarium in Boston, US realised that if DNA could be extracted from these bones, it could reveal a host of information about the culled whales.
In earlier research, Dr McLeod, Dr Brown and colleagues managed to do just that. They extracted DNA from 218 whale bones recovered from either the galleon or from the shores of Quebec and Labrador, whey they had been lying for 400 years at sites of long-forgotten Basque whaling stations.
Of those bones, just one came from a North Atlantic right whale, the others all coming from bowhead whales. "There was absolutely no evidence of a right whale targeted hunt," Dr McLeod told the BBC.