The Museum of Comparative Zoology is looking for several missing teeth.

The ivories belong to a dead whale which washed ashore on a north Massachusetts beach near Essex, Mass., Tuesday night.

The National Marine Fisheries promised the whale's remains to Harvard while the animal was still floating down the New England coast.

But before the University could retrieve the carcass, a couple from Essex allegedly cut out the whale's jaw with a chain saw and stole 29 teeth.

The couple reportedly removed the teeth and discarded the remainder of the jaw in a pile of manure about 10 miles up Route 133 in Gloucester.

After the couple found out that anonymous sources had informed police of their actions, they turned the teeth over to authorities.

"As we were following up those anonymous leads, word got back to these people that we knew about them," said state environmental police Capt. James Hanlon. "They contacted us. We went to their residence Thursday night and they turned the teeth over to us."

National Marine Fisheries now has possession of the teeth, according to a spokesperson at the Essex Police Department.

Meanwhile, researchers at the museum are awaiting the arrival of the teeth to add to the other remains of the whale.

Judy M. Chupasko, a curatorial assistant in the museum's mammal department, said yesterday that Harvard already has the specimen's skull, jaw, flipper and vertebrae.

Chupasko said that, once the teeth are received, they can be added to the rest of the specimen. Research will be delayed, but not jeopardized.

Still, she doesn't feel that the couple who stole the teeth should be excused.

"They should be punished in some way," Chupasko said.

The couple is yet to be charged, and police are withholding their names. If convicted, they could face fines of up to $50,000 and a year in jail for violation of the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

The carcass of the young, 40-foot male sperm whale was spotted by the U.S. Coast Guard near Isle of Shoals, N.H., about two and a half weeks ago, according to Petty Officer Mike J. Daponte of the U.S. Coast Guard

Office in Portland, Maine.