When 44-year-old Paul McDonald began digging out a swimming pool for his children in his backyard, he didn’t expect to find anything buried there — let alone 8,000-year-old dolphin bones.

Mar. 15—The 47-foot fin whale that washed up on the Anchorage mudflats in November, drawing hundreds of visitors and becoming a citywide phenomenon, has found a permanent home at a Wasilla museum.

The scene was gruesome — the tattered, unnervingly carved-up remains of a dolphin were found lying on a Jersey Shore beach last fall. Its beak, dorsal fin and tail in tact — the rest ...