Landlubbers, hold your breath. The newest exhibit at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science plumbs the ocean's depths, past and present, for its awesome menagerie.
A giant squid, a baby blue whale, a sperm whale skeleton, sharks ancient and modern, weird snake-necked swimmers and toothy prehistoric pals—these "Monsters of the Deep" go for a "swim" in the museum, June 13 through Jan. 8.
The show is a complement to the museum's 100,000-gallon aquarium system that's brimming with life. A weekly Touch Tank will bring visitors even closer to some aquatic wonders; the exhibit's hands-on components will engage interest, too.
The real eyeful, though, is the size and scope of the creature replicas suspended in air throughout the museum for the next six months.
The temporary exhibit is from the Cocoa Beach, Fla.-based Paleofun. Monsters of the Deep has been around the country, hitting dozens of venues in more than a decade on tour.
"We found that the museums love the big, showy pieces," says Paleofun owner Steve Cayer. "They really have the biggest bang."
Its blend of prehistoric and modern creatures, big and small, is a key attraction. "One of the things we concentrate on is detail ... there's going to be little prehistoric crustaceans running on the bottom, little crayfish getting eaten, there's going to be bigger fish behind them. ..." Cayer says. The package brings flexible appeal, for those with both scientific interest in the past and/or a healthy curiosity about the present aquatic life. Monsters can mean a blue whale or a plesiosaur.
"We have just crazy things that most people have never seen or heard of," says Cayer, such as a 5-foot ancient sea scorpion. That spurs learning because visitors want to know, what is that thing?
"It has such strong ties with our permanent exhibits ... both the living specimens and the non-living specimens," says museum director Libby Hartfield. "So this was a perfect thing to draw out interesting items that are in our paleo collection" and make connections with the big present-day specimens and the current marine habitat of the Mississippi Sound.
Monsters of the Deep provides a chance to see some favorite fossils in fleshed out form.
Look up to see a dunkleosteus in full in the atrium, with a smile even a mother might have trouble loving. Then study its armored skull in the museum's fossil display. "One of oldest things that has ever been found in Mississippi is pieces of this guy," Hartfield says.
The zygorhiza has a stouter build than his 17- or 18-foot serpentine skeleton—the state fossil and museum's pride, nicknamed Ziggy - might suggest.
This is also a chance for the museum to enhance its marine exhibits. The camouflaged angle fish - "they've got that little lure and go to town," aquarist John Hardy says—is nearly invisible next to a rock in one display while a banded cat shark hides around a corner.
Hardy picks a horseshoe crab out of a tank. "In Florida, they call this a Key West back scratcher."
Museum visitors will get to see developing shark eggs and, in the Touch Tank on Fridays, feel the spikiness of a pincushion sea urchin.
