When a humpback whale washed up dead on the shores of a Danish island in May, it marked the end of an extraordinary and troubled journey.
But for the whale known as "Timmy," the story is not entirely over - at least not for the bones now destined for the Natural History Museum in Copenhagen.
The museum has taken possession of a selection of Timmy's skeletal remains, collected from a beach on the Danish island of Anholt last Friday before the rest of the carcass was removed and transported to the mainland.
For visitors to the Danish capital, the bones are set to offer a rare and intimate encounter with one of the ocean's largest creatures.
Timmy's tale is one that gripped much of northern Europe. The severely weakened humpback had stranded repeatedly along the German Baltic coast from late March onwards. Its stranding on the beach of Timmendorfer Strand gave rise to its nickname of Timmy in local media.
Local conservationists initially decided it was impossible to save the whale and opted to let it die in peace. Then, in late April, a private conservation initiative loaded the whale onto a cargo vessel and transported it out toward the North Sea, releasing it in the hope it would recover and swim free.
It was not to be. Timmy was found dead on Anholt's beach weeks later.
In the days that followed, the carcass bloated up as it filled with gas, causing concerns that it could explode. Experts in protective suits soon cut open the yellowish-brown carcass with a long knife to release air from the severely bloated animal and the whale was then dissected.
A post-mortem examination in early June confirmed the whale was female. However the cause of death remains a mystery.
From beach to museum
For the Natural History Museum in Copenhagen, Timmy's remains represent a significant acquisition. Humpback whale skeletons are rare in European museum collections, and the bones of an animal with such a well-documented life history add scientific as well as emotional value.
According to Danish broadcaster TV 2, the remains including a pectoral fin, five vertebrae, a scapula and the whale’s hyoid bone were already sent to the capital.
The museum has not yet announced when or how the bones will be displayed, but Copenhagen's Natural History Museum - located in the grounds of the city's botanical gardens - is well worth a visit in its own right, with extensive zoological and geological collections spanning millions of years of natural history.
What happened to the rest of Timmy?
The remainder of the carcass was transported to a processing facility operated by Daka Denmark in the city of Randers.
There, the remains were separated into three components: water, which is cleaned and discharged into the fjord; fat from the whale's blubber layer, which is converted into biodiesel; and everything else - bones, tendons and skin - which is processed into a kind of meal used as biomass fuel in a cement factory.
It is an unglamorous end, but for those who want to remember Timmy differently, Copenhagen's museum will eventually offer something more lasting: the quiet, enormous presence of her bones.
