Skull and Backbone Breakdown
The breakdown of the Tranque skeleton’s core structure is outlined: 20 feet of the 72-foot total length is the skull and jaw, leaving 50 feet of plain backbone, with a circular basket of ribs attached to just under one-third of the backbone’s length that once enclosed the whale’s internal organs.
Rib Basket Description
The narrator describes the whale’s vast ivory-ribbed chest, paired with the long, unbroken spine extending straight away from it, as resembling the hull of a large ship newly laid on construction stocks, with only 20 of its naked bow ribs inserted and the keel otherwise a long, disconnected timber.
Ship Hull Analogy
The narrator expands on the ship hull analogy for the whale’s rib basket and spine: the structure looks identical to a ship under construction with only its first 20 bow ribs fitted, and the keel still a disconnected long length of timber for the time being.
Rib Dimensions
The narrator details the dimensions of the whale’s ribs: there are 10 ribs per side. Starting from the neck, the first rib is nearly 6 feet long, the second through fourth grow successively longer, the fifth (middle) rib is the longest at 8 feet plus inches, and ribs shorten from there to the tenth and final rib at 5 feet plus inches. All ribs have thickness proportional to their length, and the middle ribs are the most arched.
Arsacides Beam Usage
The narrator notes that in the Arsacides region, these large whale ribs are repurposed as beams to support footpath bridges built over small streams.
Skeleton and Invested Form
The narrator reflects that the whale’s skeleton is not a perfect mold of its living, flesh-covered form: the largest middle rib, which sits at the whale’s deepest living point (at least 16 feet deep in life), measures only a little over 8 feet, so it only conveys half the true magnitude of that part of the living whale. Large portions of the whale’s flesh, muscle, blood, and bowels wrapped around the naked spine in life, the fins are only a few disordered joints in the skeleton, and the heavy, boneless tail flukes are entirely absent from the remains.
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