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 – 16 th 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, 18 th 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 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