Bonehenge is our community outreach project of choice here at Southern Fried Science. Over the last few years we’ve been raising money and publicity to help make Bonehenge a reality. There is a widget on the left side of the page where you can make a donation to help build Bonhenge. We’ll match all donations up to $250 dollars, so you can make you contribution count double. Here are three reasons why you should contribute to Bonehenge:
- It will be the most accurate re-articulation of a sperm whale on display anywhere in the world. Not only will students be able to see this massive skeleton up close and personal, they will get to interact with casts of the bones, rebuilding the highly asymmetric pectoral fins from x-ray images of the real things, compare them to analogous bones in their own body, and see the rare vestigial pelvic bones – three of them, a femur, tibia, and fibula – a rare opportunity for kids to explore mammalian convergent evolution.
- It will connect people to the history of the North Carolina Coast. Diamond City, now vanished into the dune, used to be a vibrant whaling community. At Bonehenge, people will get to see the mysterious and valuable spermaceti oil that lubricated the gears of the industrial revolution and sent American whale ships to the farthest reaches of the world.
- It has already produced new insights into the biology and physiology of Sperm Whales. The extreme degree of asymmetric, to the point that there are different bones on either side of the animal, is just one example of the discoveries made during this project. Perhaps we’ll soon figure out why these bones are so porous compared to those of other sperm whale specimens.
Check out these posts to find out what Bonehenge is and why it matters to the North Carolina coastal community: