A fragment of a weapon used by commercial whalers in the late 1800s has been found in a massive bowhead whale caught off Alaska last month - suggesting that the whale was more than a century old.

The tip of a bomb lance thought to have been manufactured in the 1880s was discovered in a bowhead that was harvested in a traditional 'subsistence hunt' conducted by the Inupiat, an Alaskan Eskimo tribe.

The fragment shows that the 49ft whale, which weighed about 50 tonnnes, could be nearly 130 years old, said Craig George, an Alaskan wildlife biologist.

“It was probably at least a yearling when it was struck, because the whalemen never took calves,” Mr George added.

The find adds to recent evidence that bowhead whales have life spans that extend well past a century - including the discovery of old stone tools, last used in the 1880s, in whales hunted in the early 1990s, as well as analysis of the lenses of whales’ eyes.

Mr George said that the fragment of the bomb lance found by the Inupiat whalers was particularly easy to date because it was patented.

He said that the Inupiat have long said that bowhead whales live for the equivalent of two human lifetimes. “That’s their traditional knowledge. We’re still catching up."

The bowhead whale - also known as Greenland Right Whales or Artctic Whales - was almost wiped out by commercial whaling but the population off Alaska is gradually recovering since an internaitonal ban was imposed.

But indigneous people from Alaska, Greenland and the Chukotka region of eastern Russia and Greenland are permitted to hunt a fixed number of whales for traditional, non-commercial consumption. The Alaskan Eskimos are allowed to take about 50 a year.

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