By Pat McShea
An unusual bench within the Hall of North American Wildlife inspires grand scale thinking.
If you sit upon a level-topped portion of the nearly 20-foot-long great blue whale lower jaw, it’s easy to imagine your seat’s travel history as part of a living ocean-dwelling giant.
Jaw bone sitters now have much more to consider because of Information shared by the curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History.
In a recent essay in The New York Times titled, Wrap Your Mind Around a Whale, paleobiologist Nick Pyenson discusses evolutionary forces that limit whale size.
For great blue whales, Pyenson explains, jaw size reflects a delicate balance. These enormous mammals, whose total body length has been known to reach 109 feet, must be able to close their jaws rapidly enough to capture moving prey. They also must gain enough calories from each gulp to make-up for energy spent powering the required muscle movements.
For any museum visitors who require visual and tactile assistance to imagine how the bone bench was once part of a swimming creature, a stop in Discovery Basecamp is recommended.
Although there’s not a great blue whale replica in the Whales Toolbox, examining the plastic models of eight featured species is a good way to begin learning about whale diversity.
Patrick McShea works in the Education and Visitor Experience department of Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.
