Help us remember this museum exhibit about a whale (?)

November 10, 2021 7:58 AM

My wife swears that she went to a museum exhibit in the UK where the size of a giant whale skeleton was compared to that of an elephant. The main thing she remembers about it was that the elephant was standing in the enormous whale's jaws . She doesn't think it was a dream or the squid and the whale from that NYC museum. Does this ring a bell?
posted by johngoren to Science & Nature (6 answers total)

This BBC article about a finback whale skeleton at the Museum of Zoology at Cambridge University shows it was once displayed with many other skeletons in and around it, including some that I think are elephant skeletons.
posted by mbrubeck at 8:10 AM on November 10, 2021

Any idea when this might have been?

That finback whale was hanging outside the museum on its own by the time I was at university there in the '90s (I walked past it to get to lectures, and you wouldn't believe how many of my fellow students were so focused on their destination they literally didn't see it).
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 8:54 AM on November 10, 2021

Could it be the whale and elephant skeletons in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History?
posted by sizeable beetle at 9:07 AM on November 10, 2021

The mammal exhibit in the Natural History Museum in London also has elephant replicas and skeletons displayed next to whale replicas and skeletons. There's a good view in this photo from this blog post.
posted by mbrubeck at 11:26 AM on November 10, 2021

Possibly the Natural World Galleries at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh? There is definitely a whale skeleton at the top, and then there are lots of other models and skeletons displayed to give a sense of comparative size and shape. I don't remember their being an elephant in the whale's jaw though.
posted by Jabberwocky at 11:34 AM on November 10, 2021

It was the Scottish museum, thanks much!
posted by johngoren at 3:25 AM on November 11, 2021