What? A Polar Bear?

Polar Bear Donation Brings New Possibilities for Exploring Ice Age Maine

Specimen of 1,500 pound bear on exhibit through September 5, 2016

A recently donated polar bear specimen is temporarily on exhibit in the museum’s 4th floor gallery.

Paula Work, the museum’s registrar and curator of biology, explains the value of this donation to the museum’s education program: “Polar bears would have likely lived on the sea ice in the Gulf of Maine thousands of years ago. Through this magnificent specimen, the museum’s education and curatorial staff can engage visitors in discussions about now-vanished animals that once inhabited Maine, as well as the impacts of environmental change.”

This male polar bear was probably about 10 years old and weighed about 1,500 pounds when it was legally hunted in the Arctic in 1995 by Dort Bigg of Turner Maine. Mr. Bigg was a big game hunter who relied on specially made muzzleloader rifles for each of his hunts. Read the first-person story of Mr. Bigg’s hunt in an article he wrote for the March/April 1997 issue of Safari.