The story of the Zagreb whale – Zagreb City Day
The story of the Zagreb whale – Zagreb City Day
If we pass along Bologna Avenue in the direction of Zaprešić, at the turn-off for the Sutinska vrela hall we will see a life-size sculpture of a huge mammal – the Zagreb whale.
Upright, as if it were still swimming in the Sarmatian Sea in which it lived approximately thirteen million years ago.
And indeed, a sea once washed the edges of today’s Medvednica and spread widely across northern Croatia, covering the plains, forests, towns and villages we know today.
Sculpture of the whale in Podsused, photo: Nives Borčić.
The remains of the Zagreb whale were most likely collected and brought to the museum by Major Mijat Sabljar, “who at that time lived near Sused, a friend of natural history in general and a diligent collector, and was the first to begin collecting fossils under Sused” (Vukotinović, 1870).
From his youth he cultivated a love of antiquities, but it was only while serving in Lika, where in 1827 he was assigned to the position of captain of construction of the Lika regiment, that he began to study the stones, sands and soil of that area (Linke, 2011).
It is assumed that he may have found them in the 1850s, while “the remains found under Sused remained untouched until 1870. That year, Vukotinović, in book XIII of Rad and in the paper ‘On petrifacts in general…’, mentioned in very general terms a huge backbone, saying that one does not know whether it belongs to a mammal or a salamander.” (Gorjanović, 1892).
But let us return far into the geological past, approximately 13 million years ago, to the Sarmatian period.
The vast, shallow and warm Paratethys Sea covered most of northern Croatia, as well as a large part of Central Europe.
At that time, only the highest parts of the Slavonian mountains, the peaks of Ivanščica, Kalnik and Zagreb Mountain, rose up like islands.
This sea was located in a climatic zone of almost tropical and subtropical areas, with very lush plant and animal life.
Numerous tropical plants such as palms, laurels, eucalyptus and cinnamon trees grew in large numbers along the seashores, but there were also oaks, pines, ashes and beeches.
The sea was rich in fish, bivalves, snails, sea urchins, corals and algae. Numerous whales also swam there, including our “Zagreb” whale.
We can conclude all this from the many fossils found in this part of Medvednica.
Podsused and Dolje are well-known fossil sites whose finds are today kept in the Croatian Natural History Museum. The numerous collections of fossil fish and fossil flora from these localities are especially significant.
All finds from this area are extremely valuable to geologists because they testify to life in and around the Paratethys Sea.
“On the left bank of the Sava, a little more than eight kilometres west of Zagreb, rises a hill about 61 metres above the Sava plain, and on it stands old Sused-grad, now a mere ruin. On the southern side of that hill, facing the Sava, about twenty years ago they opened a quarry in order to obtain material for the construction of the quay on the Sava branch near Trnje, south of Zagreb. While extracting building stone, a multitude of imprints of fish and plants were discovered. An almost complete skeleton of a great whale was also found. Unfortunately, only a small part of those bones was preserved, which Mr. Van Beneden in Leuven partly described under the name Mesocetus Agrami.”
This is how Gjuro Pilar described the Sused site, from which he described the fossil flora in his monograph Flora fossilis Susedana from 1883.
Unfortunately, the ruins of Sused-grad are still there, with no signs of reconstruction, overgrown with grass and shrubs.
a) Site of the “Zagreb whale” in 1873, photo: I. Standl
b) Site today, photo: N. Borčić
The quarry below Sused-grad was opened in the 1860s, but it obviously did not operate for long, since Pilar (1883) wrote: “In the spring of 1871, we visited the Sused quarry for the first time, already then completely abandoned.”
In any case, the remains of the Zagreb whale were found in the quarry during the extraction of lithothamnion limestone, formerly better known as “litavac”.
A large block of limestone was embedded among Sarmatian sediments – soft marls, diatomites, or as they were once called “knjižarci” because of their pronounced lamination.
Lithothamnion limestone dates from the Badenian period, approximately 15 million years ago, and was part of the Paratethys coast at that time.
It most likely broke off and fell into the sea onto a muddy bottom, from which laminated diatomite later formed through lithification.
It was precisely in these diatomites that numerous fossilised bones of different whales were found, including this Zagreb whale.
That large block of litavac, “which from above had collapsed into the marl”, became part of an interesting story about the life and death of the whale, but more on that later.
Schematic profile of the Sused “quarry”: a) Vukotinović, 1870. b) Gorjanović-Kramberger, 1892.
Gjuro Pilar sent the whale remains, which were lying in the depot of the then National Museum, for identification to Prof. Pierre-Joseph van Beneden, a Belgian zoologist and palaeontologist.
These were bones from the rear part of the skull, various vertebrae, part of the jaw and auditory apparatus, and a rib fragment – 11 bones in total.
In his work “Une baleine fossile de Croatie, appartenant au genre Mesocete” from 1884, Van Beneden attributed these bones to the remains of a whale from the genus Mesocetus, and since it was a previously unknown species, he named it after Zagreb – Mesocetus agrami.
And so our whale received its name, freely translated as the Zagreb Mesocete, or the Zagreb whale.
Somewhat later, Dragutin Gorjanović-Kramberger, the famous Croatian palaeontologist, published the paper “On the fossil cetaceans of Croatia and Carniola” (1892), in which he described all whale finds known up to that time from Croatia and Slovenia.
He redescribed the species Mesocetus agrami because, since Van Beneden’s description, some new bones had been found which Gorjanović associated with the same specimen – the right upper arm bone, part of the forearm, and the lower and upper jaws.
“But since several important bones of the same Mesocete were again found in the collections of our National Museum and the Royal Great Gymnasium of Zagreb, it became necessary, for a better understanding of its organisation, to publish this interesting whale, all the more because other material had also been collected and because a prepared symphysis had to be studied anew.”
Plates from Dragutin Gorjanović-Kramberger’s paper “On the fossil cetaceans of Croatia and Carniola” (1892) with drawings of the remains of the Zagreb whale.
The interpretations of the “death” of the Zagreb whale in the works of Van Beneden and Gorjanović-Kramberger are interesting.
The Belgian palaeontologist wrote “that that block of litavac, once undermined by the waves of the Sarmatian Sea, fell onto a living Mesocete, or at least while it was still covered with flesh, and thus pressed in the skull roof and neural processes of the vertebrae!” (translation of the quote: Gorjanović-Kramberger, 1892).
Van Beneden thus explained the deformations on the bones of the fossil whale.
To this, Gorjanović wrote: “In contrast to this, I only have to mention that from under Sused we also have a beautiful lumbar vertebra of a certain Champsodelphis, in which both neural apophyses are also crushed and pressed axially into the body of the vertebra. For the sake of consistency, we would have to assume that that unfortunate block of litavac killed an entire generation of Podsused whales. … I found it necessary to mention this here, because one must not forget the pressure caused by tectonic conditions, as a result of which a large number of fossils are generally deformed in various ways.”
With his great palaeontological knowledge, and also as an experienced geologist, Gorjanović-Kramberger correctly concluded how the deformations on the bones of the Zagreb whale may have formed.
How this mesocete “met its end” we can only assume: perhaps it was stranded, perhaps the living conditions did not suit it, perhaps… unfortunately, we will never know exactly (Rukavina, 1993).
Mesocetus agrami – fossil remains, from Rukavina, 1993.
The Zagreb whale, Mesocetus agrami, belongs to the extinct whale genus Mesocetus, the family Balaenopteridae, and the suborder Mysticeti – baleen whales.
Today’s whales from this family are among the largest animals on Earth, with some reaching lengths of up to about thirty metres.
Based on the fossil remains – the rear part of the skull, upper jaw, incomplete lower jaw, right upper arm bone, part of the right forearm and thirteen vertebrae – it was concluded that the Zagreb whale was approximately 6 metres long, indicating that it was a younger specimen.
Based on the structure of the jaw, it most likely fed on plankton or small fish.
The remains of the Zagreb whale are kept in the depot of the Croatian Natural History Museum, photo: N. Borčić.
Whatever the case, it has remained forever preserved in the fossils housed in the Museum, and also in a prominent place near the area where it was found.
Namely, in 2001, its reconstruction was installed, the work of sculptor Zdenko Šlibar, incorporating casts of the original bones made by restorer Slavimir Slaviček.
Thanks to the authors of the project “Zagreb Before It Existed – Zagreb Before 1094”, replicas of Zagreb’s archaeological and palaeontological heritage were placed at the sites where these valuable objects were found.
And so our Zagreb whale still “swims” “beneath the hill where the ruins of Sused-grad stand”.
Literature:
Gorjanović-Kramberger, D. (1892): O fosilnih Cetaceih Hrvatske i Kranjske. Rad JAZU, Knj. 111, 1-21, Zagreb.
Linke, K. (2011): Prilog poznavanju života i rada Mijata Sabljara (1790. – 1865.). Vjesnik Arheol. muzeja u Zagrebu, XLIV, 219-260, Zagreb.
Pilar, Gj. (1883): Flora fossilis Susedana. Djela JAZU, 4, VIII+163, Zagreb.
Rukavina, D. (1993): „Zagrebački kit“ – Mesocetus agrami. Priroda, 83/1, 28-29, Zagreb.
Beneden, P. I., van (1882): Une baleine fossile de Croatie-appartenant au genre Mesocete. Mem. de l’ Acad. Roy. Sci. Belgique, 2 (45), 3-29, Bruxelles.
Vukotinović, Lj. (1870): O petrefaktih (okaminah) u obće, i o podzemskoj fauni i flori Susedskih laporah. Rad JAZU, 13, 172-212, Zagreb.