Whale Detective

A warehouse in a suburb outside of Washington, D.C., may look unremarkable from the outside. But inside, it’s packed with massive bones and preserved fossil remains. They belong to whales—the biggest creatures to have ever lived on Earth. It’s Nick Pyenson’s job to oversee this collection of giants.

Pyenson is a paleontologist—a scientist who studies ancient life on Earth—and the curator of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s collection of marine mammal fossils. It’s the largest collection of whale bones and whale fossils in the world. He uses the collection to investigate an age-old mystery: how whales have evolved, or changed over time. Pyenson spoke with Science World about the secrets these ancient remains are revealing.

As a college student, I worked on a project studying the evolution of whale brains by examining fossilized whale skulls at the Smithsonian. I realized that whales were an exciting and understudied group of animals in evolutionary history. Now I’m the curator of the collection I worked on as an undergraduate.

Whales have changed tremendously over time. The first whale-type creature was a 1.75 meter (6 foot)-long, four-legged animal that lived on land millions of years ago. Over time, that species evolved into the mighty ocean-dwellers we know today. Understanding how these dramatic changes occurred tells us about how evolution works.

I get to ask important questions about life and try to answer them. What makes paleontology so great is being able to actually hold those answers in your hand. To me, handling ancient fossils is like traveling through time.