Marine Marvel Fall 2026

Like a 180-piece puzzle of bright white bone, the enormous skeleton of a blue whale — the largest creature ever known to live on Earth — has finally come together for permanent display at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport. After the creature washed up dead on the Southern Oregon coast in 2015, leaders of OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute pursued the rare opportunity to turn its 5,500-pound, 70-foot skeleton into a resource for learning and discovery. Blue whales typically sink to the ocean floor after death and only a handful of their skeletons are on view in North America. This May, a team from Alberta, Canada-based Dinosaur Valley Studios put the cleaned, restored and preserved skeleton back together again, bone by bone, in the courtyard of the Gladys Valley Marine Studies Building. “The impact of the finished display is powerful and humbling,” said Lisa T. Ballance, director of the Marine Mammal Institute. “It will inspire everyone who sees it.” Learn more about visiting the bones.