This prompted the marine enthusiasts and mammalogy technicians at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto to preserve the massive specimen’s heart.
While talking to the Smithsonian Magazine, Jacqueline Miller, a mammalogy technician at Royal Ontario Museum, explained the painstaking extraction and preservation process.
During the heart’s extraction, the group of scientists pumped more than 700 gallons of formaldehyde, which stiffens muscles, into the whale’s heart.