This blue whale skeleton installation time-lapse is the most incredible thing you’ll see all day

We can’t count the number of times we’ve seen an intricate display in a museum and wondered what the installation process was like. Thanks to the Natural History Museum in London, our curiosity has been satisfied in the form of this awe-inspiring time-lapse of a blue whale skeleton being erected in the building’s Hintze Hall.

Replacing its predecessor and visitor favorite  — a Diplodocus dinosaur affectionately known as Dippy — the massive female blue whale named Hope recently became the museum’s main exhibit, serving as a “symbol of humanity’s power to shape a sustainable future.” According to the museum, the skeleton comes from a whale that was stranded in 1891 on Ireland’s Wexford Harbour Island.

The frame of the 126-year-old sea mammal hangs from the ceiling, with all 221 bones suspended in a diving lunge feeding position. The installation took months of preparation, and it’s an incredible sight.

On Thursday, the museum presented an official unveiling of Hope along with the time-lapse video that shows the skeleton being pieced together from start to finish.

"Blue whales had been hunted to near extinction but they became the first species we decided on a global scale to save, giving us hope for the future," the museum wrote on Facebook.

While the whale is obviously the free exhibit’s main attraction  — the Duchess of Cambridge and Sir David Attenborough attended a gala launch ahead of the unveiling —it is also accompanied by various specimens that represent the world’s natural beauty, including the skeleton of an American mastadon, a 4.5-billion-year-old Imilac meteorite gem that dates to the beginning of the solar system and a 122-129-million-year-old Mantellisaurus, one of the most complete dinosaur fossils ever found in the U.K.