It might seem hard to believe, but the Field Museum houses more than 30 million scientific specimens. Famous objects such as Sue the T. rex are among the thousands of specimens on display, but these pieces make up less than 1 percent of the museum's total collection. For the first time, visitors are invited behind the scenes to not only see (and touch) some of these rare and unique items but also to explore the process of specimen science and learn about the scientific research it inspires.
The Field Museum's newest exhibition, Specimens: Unlocking the Secrets of Life, opens on Friday, March 10, but we were invited to a sneak peak of this eye-popping exhibit. Here are the five most amazing things we saw inside Specimens.
Elephas maximus!
Photograph: Jonathan Samples
The first thing you'll see when you walk into the exhibit is the gigantic skeleton of an Asian elephant. It is the largest mammal specimen in the museum's behind-the-scenes collection.
A new dinosaur
Photograph: Jonathan Samples
OK, the Brachiosaurus isn't a new dinosaur, but these bones are among the first ever uncovered. Elmer Riggs, the Field Museum's first paleontology curator, unearthed these Brachiosaurus vertebrae and sacrum in Colorado in 1900. The fossil provided Riggs all the evidence needed to prove he had discovered a new species of dinosaur.
Giant ants
Photograph: Jonathan Samples
Although 25 times larger than the real thing, this 3-D model of a giant neotropical turtle ant is an accurate representation of this already oversized species. Hundreds of actual turtle ant specimens accompany this installation, which highlights research currently underway to try and understand how the different diets of ant species affect their evolution.
Real-life monsters
Photograph: Jonathan Samples
The Field Museum has more than 2,600 "Tully Monster" specimens, which were collected at a location just south of Chicago. The Tully Monster, which was only a few inches in length, is just one of the more than 300 animal species and 125 plant species identified from the fossils collected at Mazon Creek—considered one of the world's most important and diverse fossil sites.
A creepy, life-saving squirrel
Photograph: Jonathan Samples
This collection of 600 bat and squirrel specimens from the Democratic Republic of the Congo was gathered during a joint expedition with the Centers for Disease Control. They might look like something out of a horror movie, but these critters were collected in order to study monkeypox—a rare and potentially fatal disease.
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