One afternoon in the late 1980s, a young marine biologist named Drew Harvell unearthed dozens of sea slugs in an upstate New York warehouse. She also found many species of jellyfish and octopus, some of which she'd never seen in the oceans. The creatures were packed in cardboard boxes, and while they looked real at first glance, they were all made of glass. The collection of nearly 600 glass sea invertebrates belonged to Harvell's new employer, Cornell University. They had traveled from Germany in 1885, purchased as teaching aids to expose students to ocean life they had scant opportunity to experience in person. But as technology made both underwater photography and fieldwork more accessible, the glass sculptures became obsolete. They spent decades in storage before Harvell rediscovered them. "I fell in love," she says, recalling how awestruck she'd been by their uncanny resemblance to actual slugs and jellies. "I was stunned to see what to me were old friends."
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