ANN ARBOR—Visitors to the University of Michigan’s Exhibit Museum can take a peek at the past while getting a glimpse of the future in the Museum’s Hall of Evolution where preparations for a major exhibit on fossil whales are under way.

The exhibition’s special work area has small windows where visitors can watch preparator Jennifer Moerman assemble Dorudon, the 15-foot centerpiece of the whale evolution exhibit opening in Spring 1998. Have whales always lived in the sea? Did they ever have legs and walk the earth? We may have to wait until the 1998 exhibit for the answers to these and other questions about the evolution of whales.

But in the meantime, Moerman has completed the time- consuming construction of hundreds of molds of Dorudon’s vertebrae, ribs and other skeletal parts and is ready to begin assembling the whale. Holes will be drilled in the cast pieces, and Dorudon will be suspended from a 17-foot rod on wires from the Hall’s ceiling.

Jill Gregory, graduate student in U-M’s Medical Illustration Program, has livened the surface of ordinary plywood surrounding the exhibit preparation area with the brilliance of ocean colors behind a rendition of Dorudon’s skeleton.

The Exhibit Museum’s Hall of Evolution is open Monday- Saturday 9 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sunday 1-5 p.m. Visitors can check the progress of the whale fossil skeleton assembly through early 1997. Admission is free.