TRONDHEIM, NORWAY—Medieval whalers may have eradicated two species from the eastern North Atlantic, according to an IFL Science report. Youri van den Hurk and Fanny Sikström of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and their colleagues examined more than 700 pieces of whalebone unearthed at sites in northern and western Europe. The species for each of these bones, which were dated from 3500 B.C. through the eighteenth century A.D., were identified through collagen analysis. The study found that most of the earlier bones belonged to Atlantic grey whales and the North Atlantic right whale—a species mentioned in medieval records. But both of these species are now extinct in the eastern North Atlantic Ocean. Medieval hunters may have targeted these two whales because they were perceived to be easier to kill than others, or because they were the most abundant species in the region at the time, the researchers concluded. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Royal Society Open Science. To read about the wreck of a nineteenth-century whaling ship discovered in the Gulf of Mexico, go to "1,000 Fathoms Down."