Drawing the eye to extinction
Tuesday, January 31, 2017 - 12:41
in Biology & Nature
As you watch, the jaguar fades to black. Also the monkey next to it, the antelope, the grizzly bear, the wild dog, the Siberian tiger. Look around the darkened room and you’ll find other animals fading or already gone: the heath hen, extinct in 1932; the great auk, last seen in 1844; and New Zealand’s flightless moa, which survived only a few hundred years after humanity’s arrival just before 1300. The specimens of threatened, endangered, and extinct species — all from the collections of the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) — are part of a new exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH).