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