- The egg belongs to the nice auk and is one most valuable hen eggs on the planet
While many can have been tucking into chocolate eggs, the Natural History Museum was getting ready to show a way more helpful one.
As a part of its new exhibition on birds, the museum will exhibit a particularly uncommon egg belonging to an awesome auk, the one extinct British nesting hen.
One of the oldest and most valuable hen’s eggs on the planet, it’s not often placed on public show due to fears it might break or its distinctive markings could fade within the gentle.
Curator Douglas Russell stated every feminine nice auk laid eggs with a barely totally different sample, so she may simply establish her personal clutch in a crowded nesting atmosphere.
‘This is a fascinating and wonderful example of evolution,’ he stated. ‘The pattern would have been a kind of signature that great auks could instantly identify.’ The flightless nice auk, which stood about three toes tall and resembled a penguin, was as soon as a standard sight on the shores of Britain. It was hunted to extinction through the 18th and Nineteenth centuries, with the final one being killed in Papa Westray, Orkney Islands, in 1813.
An artists impression of what an awesome auk regarded like. The flightless birds have been hunted to extinction by the mid-Nineteenth century
The National History Museum in Kensington the place the egg will probably be displayed as part of the exhibition – Birds: Brilliant and Bizarre
Like penguins, they spent most of their time at sea however got here ashore to put their eggs huddled collectively. The distinctive markings on every egg have been important to keep away from them getting jumbled up.
The Natural History Museum’s egg, laid within the 1700s, is the oldest egg of any variety in its assortment. It is greater than 3 times the dimensions of a giant hen’s egg.
Using micro-CT scanning, museum scientists can evaluate the egg with these of the nice auk’s closest residing family members, such because the razorbill and customary guillemot. They hope it will generate new insights into different hen species.
The exhibition Birds: Brilliant and Bizarre opens on the National History Museum in Kensington, West London, on May 24.
