New whale skeleton to be unveiled at Florida Museum

A new 26-foot-long humpback whale skeleton now hangs from the ceiling of the Florida Museum of Natural History.

The project took a year to complete but finished on time for the museum’s 100th anniversary, wrote Kaitlin Gardiner, the museum’s public relations coordinator, in an email.

The exhibit was constructed by Michael Adams, who works in the museum’s exhibit fabrications department, Gardiner said.

“It took (him) more than a year to articulate,” she said. “It has 264 bones, five of which were missing and had to be 3-D printed.”

The whale was a juvenile male humpback that washed ashore in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, in 1990, Gardiner said. It was later donated to the museum.

She said the skeleton will be a central exhibit, with the goal of showing how fossils can lead to new discoveries of the natural world.

“We wanted to do something special for our 100th anniversary that would have a lasting impact,” wrote Darcie MacMahon, the museum’s director of exhibits and public programs, in an email.

The skeleton will be unveiled this Saturday for the museum’s 100th anniversary event, MacMahon said. The new installation will be displayed in the main gallery space, suspended from the ceiling.

There is still one piece missing from this exhibit, however: a name. That, MacMahon said, will be up to the museum’s visitors to decide.

“We’re looking forward to unveiling it this Saturday and will ask visitors to suggest names for this new iconic museum skeleton,” MacMahon said.

The completed humpback whale skeleton is ready to be unveiled at the 100th anniversary celebration of the Florida Museum of Natural History.