A sperm whale skeleton forms the centre piece of a new exhibition of the deep sea environment, which is less explored than the surface of the moon, the Natural History Museum said yesterday.

The Deep exhibition at the London museum combines real specimens of more than 50 deep sea creatures, including creatures collected 130 years ago by HMS Challenger in the 1870s.

The display aims to give visitors a glimpse of a world up to 11,000 metres below the surface of the sea - a dark, cold place where the pressure is up to 1,000 times greater than on land and which forms the largest and least explored environment on earth.

A highlight of the exhibition is a recreation of a "whale fall", which shows what happens when a whale carcass sinks to the ocean floor and becomes a rich ecosystem.

The whale fall is recreated using the sperm whale skeleton and projections and footage of deep sea species which live on the carcass.

Alex Gaffikin, exhibition developer at the Natural History Museum, said: "At the centre of the exhibition is a real sperm whale skeleton, which has never been on display before.

"It tells the fascinating story of the weird and wonderful creatures that can live on a whale carcass for up to 50 years."

Among the deep-sea species featured in the exhibition is the black sea devil, a fish whose females have big teeth and a light organ on a stalk for seeing in the dark, while males are much smaller with enormous nostrils for sniffing out their mates, which they live off as parasites until needed to fertilise the eggs.

Many deep sea fish use coloured lights as lures to catch food in the darkness, and some species such as the viperfish, which has fangs so big they cannot fit in its mouth, and the stoplight loosejaw can also dislocate their jaws to eat their prey. The Deep runs till September 5 at the Natural History Museum, and forms part of the worldwide celebrations to mark the UN's International Year of Biodiversity.