Check Out These Wondrous Objects on Display Before They Return to the Museum’s Collection

The National Museum of Natural History has more than 148 million specimens and objects in its collection — more than any other natural history museum in the world. Each of these objects provides a snapshot of vital information. Together, these snippets tell the story of how the natural world has changed over the past 4.5 billion years.

The majority of the museum’s collection is behind the scenes for researchers to study. In 2017, an assortment of the museum’s most intriguing specimens were brought out of storage and displayed to visitors as part of the “Objects of Wonder” exhibition.

For seven years, this gallery displayed some of the museum’s greatest hits — including a suit of Samurai armor given to Theodore Roosevelt for his role negotiating peace in the Russo-Japanese war, an emerald carved for Moghul rulers and the massive femur of an Apatosaurus dinosaur from Colorado. But the exhibition also showcased deeper cuts, like a cleared and stained snapping turtle, ancient harpoon tip embedded in whale bone and a fossilized squirrel gnawing on petrified walnuts.

This September, “Objects of Wonder” will close for a redesign, sending hundreds of specimens back into the collections from which they came. Stop by soon to see the standout specimens below before it is too late. (Can’t make it to the museum in time? Check out the “Objects of Wonder” story map!)

A Whale’s Earwax

To understand the lives of whales, peer inside their ears. Marine biologists have studied plugs of whale earwax for more than 50 years to accurately age these leviathans. Like the rings inside a tree trunk, layers of earwax are deposited each year to form these plugs. 

Longevity is not the only information preserved in earwax. Researchers can analyze chemical signatures in the earwax to trace hormones throughout a whale’s lifetime. Scientists can also pinpoint levels of pollutants, like pesticides and mercury, in these plugs — providing insights into how environmental conditions affect even the ocean’s largest residents.

A Helmet Fashioned From a Fish

For millennia, communities throughout the Pacific Ocean had to be resourceful. On Kiribati, a group of coral islands scattered across the central Pacific Ocean, locals relied on the natural resources they had available. They wove fiber of coconut husks to create vests, leggings and back shields. To protect their heads (as well as visually deter rivals), they fashioned helmets from the spiny skin of porcupine fish. Kiribati warriors also wielded swords studded with shark teeth.

Kiribati warriors utilized this armory until the mid-1800s. “Objects of Wonder” displays a full suit of coconut fiber armor, a shark tooth-tipped sword and a porcupine fish helmet collected sometime between 1838 and 1842 by the US Exploring Expedition.

The Final Passenger Pigeon

200 years ago, few species seemed as impervious to extinction as the passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius). At the time, there were billions of passenger pigeons, making them the most common bird in the United States. The pigeons moved in flocks so large that they blotted out the sun. However, overhunting and habitat loss caused these populations to collapse and this once ubiquitous bird became scarce.

By 1910, only one passenger pigeon remained. Named after Martha Washington, Martha the passenger pigeon spent her entire life in the Cincinnati Zoo, where she became a celebrity. When she died in 1914, she became a tragic symbol of human-caused extinction.

A Shimmering Shell

Towards the end of the dinosaurs’ heyday in the Late Cretaceous, spiral-shelled relatives of modern squid and cuttlefish reigned supreme. Known as ammonites, these cephalopods were found throughout the world’s oceans, where they lived amongst a menagerie of marine reptiles.

Due to their widespread distribution, ammonites are relatively well represented in the fossil record. But some of their fossilized shells, like the one on display in “Objects of Wonder,” possess an iridescent sheen. A gift from donors Michael and Tricia Berns, the museum’s shell hails from an area in southern Alberta renowned for its colorful shells.

Ammonite shells were composed of the same minerals as nacre, or mother of pearl. When an ammonite died and sank to the muddy seafloor, it sometimes became entombed in a rocky concretion. Eons of pressure caused the material inside the shell to deform, creating a spectrum of reflected colors, including reds, greens and blues.

A Gutskin Cloak

When Russian mariners visited the Aleutian Islands in the eighteenth century, they admired the locals’ waterproof garments, which were fashioned out of sea lion intestines. Soon, the sailors began commissioning Indigenous Unangan seamstresses to craft these gutskin parkas to resemble European cloaks.

The gutskin cloak in “Objects of Wonder” was crafted around 1835. Since then it has been on quite the journey: these lightweight cloaks were routinely given as gifts to captains and dignitaries who made their way through the Aleutian Islands. In turn, these travelers would take the garments on future voyages. The cloak in the museum was collected during the US Exploring Expedition (1838-1842) in the South Pacific’s Society Islands, thousands of miles away from where it was originally made.

An Incredible Diversity of Insects

More than two thirds of all described species are insects. In fact, there are more than three times as many known beetle species as all vertebrate species combined.

“Objects of Wonder” showcases this dazzling diversity with a series of wall panels covered with hundreds of pinned insects. This assortment includes everything from moths and dragonflies to wasps and stick insects. But with more than 1 million known insect species, each of the 500 specimens (about 200 of which are beetles) displayed in the exhibition stand in for more than 2,000 other insect species.

The Blue Flame

For more than 6,000 years, the stone lapis lazuli has been an important source of pigment thanks to its intense blue color. Lapis lazuli has been used as beads during the  Neolithic period and even adorned the funerary mask of Tutankhamun. In more recent history, the blue rock was a key source of color in painting. Artists would crush lapis lazuli and mix it with a binding agent to achieve the color ultramarine.

“Objects of Wonder” is home to a huge piece of lapis lazuli known as the “Blue Flame” for its bright color. Nearby are a number of other blue objects from the natural world, including butterflies and an iridescent glass vessel that dates back to ancient Romans.

Woolly Mammoth Hair

Outside of dinosaurs, few prehistoric species get as much attention as woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius). These relatives of living elephants are particularly well known for their shaggy coats of thick fur, which kept them warm in the Pleistocene’s frigid climate.

“Objects of Wonder” has a tuft of woolly mammoth fur on display next to a preserved hunk of mammoth meat. The hair belonged to a mammoth that lived in Siberia between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago. The animal was entombed in ice, which preserved its muscles, blood, fat and hair. But its body had begun rotting by the time it froze. When a landslide exposed the mammoth’s remains, a putrid stench greeted the scientists who discovered it. 

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Jack Tamisiea | | READ MORE

Jack Tamisiea is a Science Communications Specialist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. In addition to covering all things natural history for the museum's blog, Smithsonian Voices, he tracks media coverage and coordinates filming activities for the museum's Office of Communications and Public Affairs. Jack recently completed his masters in science writing at Johns Hopkins University and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Scientific American, National Geographic and other science-focused publications. In his free time, he loves exploring the outdoors with a sketchbook and camera. You can read more of Jack's work at https://jacktamisiea.com.