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physical science fun for bench-work types
Nov. 17th, 2010 02:03 pmI just got done moving two enormous whale skulls up at the Burke Museum, in preparation for their Meet the Mammals event this Saturday. I now have an honorably earned whalebone scrape on my right wrist and a valuable acquaintance with one calm curator and one exceedingly animated curator.
The first skull was actually on the small side for a sperm whale: it's from a female of around 35 feet long, one of about 40 who beached near Florence, OR, in 1979. It still took six of us to move with enough care. It's fascinating to look at the different plates that go into making the skull (delaminating a bit at this point in the specimen's life span), the whole and broken teeth, and the asymmetry of the internal structures. The brain is extremely well protected, but there's a huge space in front of it for the melon (a fatty echolocation organ, for those of you who were somehow not whale experts at some point during your youth).
A gray whale's skull is very different. Obviously there were no teeth, but that also means the baleen needed support, so there were much larger lower mandible bones with centimeter-wide blood vessel perforations. This skull was somewhat heavier overall, but more balanced front to back because straining tons of water through your jaws clearly requires more support than just biting things. There's no melon in baleen whales, either, so that gaping cavity in the top of the skull wasn't there at all.
If you're in Seattle, I highly recommend checking out the Burke this Saturday. Maybe they'll bring out the creepy tarsier skeleton too! There's also a weaving exhibit that looked pretty great from what I could see.
The first skull was actually on the small side for a sperm whale: it's from a female of around 35 feet long, one of about 40 who beached near Florence, OR, in 1979. It still took six of us to move with enough care. It's fascinating to look at the different plates that go into making the skull (delaminating a bit at this point in the specimen's life span), the whole and broken teeth, and the asymmetry of the internal structures. The brain is extremely well protected, but there's a huge space in front of it for the melon (a fatty echolocation organ, for those of you who were somehow not whale experts at some point during your youth).
A gray whale's skull is very different. Obviously there were no teeth, but that also means the baleen needed support, so there were much larger lower mandible bones with centimeter-wide blood vessel perforations. This skull was somewhat heavier overall, but more balanced front to back because straining tons of water through your jaws clearly requires more support than just biting things. There's no melon in baleen whales, either, so that gaping cavity in the top of the skull wasn't there at all.
If you're in Seattle, I highly recommend checking out the Burke this Saturday. Maybe they'll bring out the creepy tarsier skeleton too! There's also a weaving exhibit that looked pretty great from what I could see.
