November 27, 2010

The Biodiversity Museum

After months of meaning to go, Kathryn and I finally made our way out to UBC to look at the Biodiversity Museum. The crown jewel of said museum is the articulated blue whale skeleton suspended in the entry foyer. Buried in PEI in the 80s, the skeleton spent 20 years getting vaguely cleaned up naturally before a group of professors and students exhumed it and moved it across the country for mounting and display.
Beneath the whale there are rows upon rows of display cases containing articulated skeletons, stuffed birds, plant samples, and endless jars of preserved fish and reptiles. The cabinets are both museum and univeristy collection with every 3rd case having a facing out display for visitors and the rest being closed for preservation and student uses.
Each of the rows in the picture above is a decent sized display of specimens, with the whole museum containing thousands of different animals of all sorts. Our visit was long overdue and very enjoyable once we finally made it.
By blind luck we also ran into some of our friends from Vancouver Island that happened to be in town and in the university for the same 5 minutes we were passing by and we met up for dinner with Roger and Colleen in the evening.

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