Queen's Quay Whale Vertebra

The Royal Ontario Museum is one of the premier institutions in Canada, which often makes it a destination for local paleontological and archaeological finds. That includes a killer whale vertebra found underneath Queen's Quay and Bay Street, discovered during transit excavations in 1988. Unfortunately, the vertebra's origins are still up for debate to this day.

The discovery was, at first, a cause for excitement since no post-glacial fossil remains had ever been found in the area. But the sediment near the whalebone showed traces of ragweed pollen, indicating the bone arrived after European settlement but before the presence of the pollen became incredibly common around 1840.

Another theory posited that it was, instead, a discard from Piper's Zoo, an establishment that existed on the lakeshore of Toronto. However, Piper's Zoo never had an orca on display, so this theory was discarded. 

The current thought is that the vertebra was dropped in the harbor by a whaler during the early 19th century, and then later ended up as landfill in the early 1900s. Past that, it remains a Toronto-area mystery, on display in the Royal Ontario Museum thanks to a loan from the Toronto Transit Commission.