A more than 3,000-year-old skeleton of a Bryde's whale found in Samut Sakhon's Ban Phaeo district has been listed as a registered fossil by the Department of Mineral Resources following its publication in the Royal Gazette on Wednesday.
According to the notification, the 141 registered pieces of the whale's fossilised remains have been sent to the Golden Jubilee National Geological Museum, Pathum Thani, for study and research purposes.
For the Royal Gazette publication, the department invoked Section 26 of the Fossil Protection Act and Item No.4(2) of the notifications from the Fossil Protection Committee on a registered fossil.
According to the BBC, the 12-metre-long skeleton was found in tambon Am Pang in Ban Phaeo district, about 12 kilometres from the coast in the province just west of Bangkok, in early November 2020.
The skeleton, later identified as a Bryde's whale, was discovered six metres deep in the earth.
Some 80% of the skeleton, including vertebrae, ribs, fins, and one shoulder blade, have been recovered by the Department of Mineral Resources as of 2021.
The remains are estimated to be about 3,380 years old, according to carbon-14 dating by a paleobiological lab in the United States.
The dating results showed that tambon Am Pang was part of the sea during the late Holocene epoch, which explains the diversity of aquatic animal remains found in the area, such as shark teeth, rays, shells, and sea crabs.
According to mammal researcher Marcus Chua of the National University of Singapore, the discovery of the whale's fossilised remains has allowed researchers to find out more about the history of the particular species living in the Gulf of Thailand.