Ghosts Behind Glass: Encountering Extinction in Museums

How museums display extinct species—and what these exhibits say about us.

While it’s no longer possible to encounter a dodo in the wild, we can still come face-to-face with them in museums. The remains of extinct species—whether taxidermied, skeletal, drawn, or sculpted—stare back at us from display cases.

In this moving meditation on what’s lost and what endures, environmental historian Dolly Jørgensen visits natural history collections worldwide—from Shanghai to Philadelphia, from Edinb...