Let's be honest: If you could really sponsor the care of a Pakicetus, and write the so-called "walking whale" of the Eocene Epoch a love letter, you'd have, shall we say, a few candles on your birthday cake. Your cake might actually need to be the size of greater Los Angeles, to hold every last candle.
But you can still give the walking whale that calls our own Natural History Museum home a little affection, even if you haven't been around since the Eocene (okay, spoiler alert: It is, in fact, a walking whale skeleton). The museum just introduced a new campaign on Monday, April 9 that invites fans to sponso various items and artifacts via naming opportunities, plaques, and other means.
It's called Objects of Affection, and the museum just debuted a fancy site that allows potential donors and Pakicetus-loving lookie-loos a chance to scroll around and see if there's a match. Meaning? You don't need to be a much-entrenched, decades-attached donor to be a part of the museum's growth. The barrier for entry, in other words, is low and entirely crossable.
So, what's on the to-be-sponsored roster? There's a 15-million-year-old shark tooth up for sponsorship, as well as saber-toothed cat skull. And if you're looking for things that happen to be alive, the museum's new North Campus citrus trees need some donation-style TLC.
The gamut is wide, is what we're saying. And top dollar isn't always required; donation opportunities kick off at a hundred bucks.
And that Pakicetus? You'll pony up (whale up?) $100,000 to sponsor that bad boy*, which nets you a permanent plaque inside the museum, as well as a chance to write him a for-display "love letter." Gush and go all out on that letter, we say; he probably didn't have it too easy, back in the rough-and-tumble Eocene Epoch, so any modern kudos and care we can deal out can only be a positive thing.
* We don't know if the Pakicetus was actually a "bad boy," per se, but, hey, any land mammal that easily took to water in an ancient era seems amazingly tough to us.
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