Heavy seas and a rising tide made it difficult to carry out a postmortem, but Antonio Fernández Rodríguez, head of the institute of animal health and food security at the University of Las Palmas, was determined to find out why the whale had died.

Suspecting a digestive problem, he inspected the animal’s colon – and felt something hard stuck to that part of the intestine.

— Read more in Pathologist finds €500,000 ‘floating gold’ in dead whale in Canary Islands at The Guardian.