Collections Management Natural History Museums eMoo in the Americas.
Natural History Collections. Types of Natural History Collections Natural History Museums – Plants...
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Transcript of Natural History Collections. Types of Natural History Collections Natural History Museums – Plants...
Natural History Collections
Types of Natural History Collections
• Natural History Museums– Plants– Animals
• Skeletons• Preserved
– Fossils– Anthropology Collections– Geological collections
• Botanical Gardens• Zoological Parks
Plant Garden at the Museum of Natural History, Paris
Earliest Natural History Museums
• Cabinets of curiosities• Public Museums– 16th Century; Conrad
Gessner in Zurich– 1635; Muséum national
d'histoire naturelle in Paris– 1677; Ashmolean
Museum in Oxford– 1881; Natural History
Museum in London
Functions of Natural History Collections
• Education• Catalog biodiversity– Library of information– Repository for type
specimens– Source of physical and
molecular samples for comparison
• Conservation Main Hall of the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago
Types of Specimens
• Museums– Specimens are dry or preserved– Fossils
• Botanical gardens– Living plants in a park or in
greenhouses– Herbaria
• Zoological Parks (Zoos)– Living terrestrial animals
• Aquaria– Living aquatic animals
Natural History Museum, London
• Founded 1881• Main collections:– Botany– Entomology– Minerology– Paleontology– Zoology
National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C.
• Established 1910• One of the Smithsonian
Museums• Main collections:– Plants– Animals– Fossils– Minerals– Rocks– Meteorites– Cultural artifacts
Botanical Gardents
• From herbal gardens and exotic plants, 18th century
• History to biblical times• Test and grow plants for
medicine, dyes, food, timber, and other economic and strategic purposes
• Bartram Gardens –first botanical garden in N.A.– Satisfy European demand for
exotic plants
New York Botanical Garden, NYC
• Established 1891• 50 gardens, one a
parcel of old-growth forest
• Pfizer Plant Research Laboratory– Genomic DNA storage– TreeBOL, a project to
‘barcode’ plants• Mertz Library
Rose garden of the New York Botanical Garden
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
• Opened 1759• Largest collection of
living plants >30,000 different species
• Jodrell Laboratory– Botanical illustration– Seed collection– Research in secondary
compounds
Palm House, Kew Gardens
Herbarium Specimens
• Herbarium sheets• Dry mosses & lichens• Large specimens
stored in boxes• All kept in cabinets
according to a system
Herbarium at the Museum of Natural History, Paris
Herbaria
• Muséum national d'histoire naturelle (Paris) nearly 10 million specimens
• Ботанический институт им. В.Л.Комарова (St. Petersburg) more than 7 million specimens
• Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (7 million specimens)
• New York Botanical Garden, (7 million specimens)
Herbarium curator at the New York Botanical Garden William and Lynda Steere Herbarium
Zoos and Aquaria
• Evolved from private royal menageries
• Living collections with different habitat and dietary requirements
• Breeding programs in place for conservation and to maintain a breeding population