Llanelli Naturalists Newsletter - November 2000 - No 66
Ian Morgan

In the Llanelli Star of 12 October 2000, under the headline Mystery of the deep is resolved, it was reported that Piers Langhelt of the National Museum and Gallery of Wales, Cardiff, had pronounced that the badly decomposed, 4.9m long body of a cetacean washed up on the beach at Cefn Sidan in January 1987 was of a Risso’s Dolphin Grampus griseus. Dr Langhelt had originally thought that the carcass was of a Narwhal but in order to check this supposition he had asked that it be buried in the sand to allow time for the putrifying flesh to rot away prior to exhuming it at a later date for close examination. There have only been 65 reports of Risso’s Dolphin from British strandings since 1913, predominantly on south and south-western coasts.