Conservator spent five days installing 40-foot whale skeleton at museum

• A 119-year-old whale skeleton has returned to the Hull Maritime Museum ahead of its reopening to the public following a six-year, £20 million refurbishment.
• The 40-foot specimen, comprising 168 bones, took five days to install in the museum's newly revamped Age of Sail gallery after extensive cleaning and conservation.
• The whale was caught off New York in 1907 and belongs to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale species, with fewer than 400 remaining globally.
• When the museum reopens to the public in August, visitors will be able to crawl inside the whale's rib cage through a tunnel.
• The skeleton has a complex history, having been transferred from the University Museum of Zoology in Cambridge in 1935, which had acquired it from the American Museum of Natural History in 1908.

IN FULL

119-year-old whale skeleton returns to museum after ‘significant’ conservation