The Kitadai site was situated at latitude 36゜42'10"
N and longitude 137°11'20" E, on a hill 17 meters above sea level
and about 4.5 km away from the coast of Toyama Bay. This paper reports
a piece of a whale vertebra excavated, in July 1996, from a pillar-hole
(SB01-P1) of a building with pillars embedded directly in the ground at
the site of the later Middle Jomon-period (about 4000 B.P.). It might be
from a religious ceremony to purify a building site. The whale piece was
a left dorsal part of a cranial end of a caudal vertebra. Its greatest
length and breadth of the cranial articular surface were 9.3 cm × 5.4
cm. The vertebral epiphysis was completely fused with the body. The same
part excluding the epiphyses of a specimen of Fin Whale (Balaenoptera physalus)
which lived recently, had a greatest body length of 20 cm and a greatest
breadth of 30.5 cm of the facies terminalis cranialis (= cranial articular
surface). The only species in Toyama Bay or the near seas with a caudal
vertebra of this size is the Fin Whale. The recent specimen was a young
animal 15 meters in length. The estimated value of the greatest width of
the cranial articular surface of the whale piece is slightly more than
the specimen. The length of sexually mature 10 years old, Fin Whales is
about 18 meters. Therefore, it is estimated that the whale piece belongs
to a Fin Whale larger than 18 meters in length.