https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/take-a-dive-into-smithsonians-massive-and-amazing-whale-warehouses/2018/12/13/403c3002-fe45-11e8-862a-b6a6f3ce8199_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.880397f5df5c

 

Take a dive into Smithsonian’s massive and amazing ‘whale warehouses’

 

 

By Erin Blakemore

December 16 at 9:30 AM

Earth’s biggest animals live and die in the ocean. But a few whales have long afterlives in museums — and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History boasts the world’s largest collection of whale material.

But all those bones present a tricky challenge. The massive specimens, among the largest ever collected, take up tons of space. So the museum houses them in its half-a-million-square-foot “whale warehouses” in Suitland, Md.

Emily Graslie, host of “The Brain Scoop” channel on YouTube, recently toured the warehouses and interviewed Michael McGowan, the museum’s curator of marine mammals. A 10-minute video of her journey is on YouTube.

It’s an intriguing dive into what it takes to collect and store these mammoth mammals, and a testament to the sheer volume of amazing artifacts the museum has accumulated over the years. McGowan shows Graslie some of the collection’s coolest, and weirdest, specimens, both new and old.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au4j36pQfVY