The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History is opening a new exhibit it says will include hundreds of rarely displayed objects.
The exhibit, "Objects of Wonder: From the Collections of the National Museum of Natural History,'' opens Friday and will remain on view through 2019.
The museum says the exhibit will give visitors the sense they are on a behind-the-scenes tour of the Smithsonian's collections.
Objects being featured in the exhibit include: Martha, the last known passenger pigeon; the "Blue Flame,'' one of the world's largest pieces of gem-quality lapis lazuli; preserved meat and hair from a woolly mammoth; earwax from a whale and a fossil of a Pinniped, one of the earliest members of the group of animals that includes seals, sea lions and walruses.
