Fossil Fish Cleaning

Some things were just too big to leave the building. Bolted directly into our former Discovery Room, it took our friends at Research Casting International to get this trophy fish off the wall. Now we’re giving it a makeover!

Preparators Christina Lutz and Cathy Lash have been meticulous cleaning all 15 feet of Xiphactinus audax since March. They’ve counted 86 vertebrae and named it Bubbles. And after peeling back layers of what may have been shoe polish, we’ve discovered that all but one of its teeth are real fossils.

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