FEATURE Rhapsody Reassembled

Rhapsody Reassembled She’ll Be Back

By Dr. Gavin Hanke

Idon’t know if it takes a village to raise a child, but it does take a team of amazing people to pack up an orca skeleton, ship it to another province, reassemble it and send it back for exhibition. In October 2019 conservation intern Katie McEvoy and exhibit arts specialists Cindy Van Volsem and Megan Anderson packed up and shipped the skeleton of Rhapsody (J32), an adult female Southern Resident orca in the

early November. Frank Hadfield and his crew (Brandon Kozdas, Eddie Dahm and Lori Joliffe) then began the process of rearticulating Rhapsody’s bones. Since Rhapsody is a research specimen, she had to be assembled without any damage to her bones. Frank’s crew commonly works with fossils that have similar restrictions, so they created a metal armature to support and hold the bones without any bolts or screws. The armature is a work of art in itself, and since it resembles a certain post-apocalyptic robot, it became known as the Orcinator.

Royal BC Museum’s research collection, to southern Alberta. Even the packing crates were custom-made by museum staff: Josh Pierrot and Devin Hobbins from our exhibit fabrication team. The entire project was orcanized (sorry) under the watchful eyes of Dave Stewart and Michael Barnes.

Rhapsody was shipped to Dinosaur Valley Studios in Drumheller, Alberta, in After a brief lull in activity over the yuletide season, we prepared for Rhapsody’s return. As you can imagine, Rhapsody’s articulated skeleton wouldn’t fit in the original shipping crates. Dinosaur Valley Studios had to make new crates, which will also travel with the exhibition. A reconstructed Rhapsody was ready for one last showing to school groups in Drumheller in mid-January before the trip back to the Royal BC Museum.

Have you kept note of the number of people directly involved in this project? I count at least 12, including me. No bones about it, this was an amazing team effort, and I am fortunate that I get to work with so many talented people.

Look for Rhapsody (and her calf) in the laboratory section of Orcas: Our Shared Future, opening May 15, 2020.

The sand-coloured armature vanishes next to Rhapsody’s fully articulated skeleton.