History
Othniel Charles Marsh was an undergraduate and later the Professor of Paleontology at Yale University. His education was paid for by his wealthy uncle George Peabody, who began to donate much of his accumulated wealth to various educational institutions at the end of his life. At the request of his nephew, he founded Yale's Museum of Natural History in 1866 with a gift of $150,000.
Yale's collection at the time was mostly minerals, collected by the geologist and mineralogist Benjamin Silliman. Marsh was one of the museum's first three curators, and when Peabody died in 1869 he used his inheritance to fund expeditions which greatly increased the museum's collections. His primary interest was dinosaurs, and during the infamous period in paleontological history known as the Bone Wars, he discovered 56 new species of dinosaur and shipped literally tons of fossils back from the American Southwest. His finds also included fossils of vertebrates and invertebrates, trackways of prehistoric animals, and archaeological and ethnological artifacts.
The museum officially opened to the public in 1876. In 1917, it was demolished and replaced by the Harkness Quadrangle dormitory. Due to World War I, most of the collections were put in storage until December, 1925, when the current building was dedicated. The new building had a great, 2-story hall designed specifically to hold Marsh's dinosaurs.
Some other significant events include:
- In 1931, the mounting of Marsh's Apatosaurus was finished, after 6 years of work.
- In 1947, Rudolph F. Zallinger finished painting dinosaurs in their natural habitats in his 110-foot (34 m) long mural The Age of Reptiles, after 3-1/2 years of work.
- In 1959, Bingham Laboratory was completed.
- In 1963, Kline Laboratory was completed.
- In 1972, the Birds of Connecticut Hall opened.
- In 2001, The interdisciplinary Environmental Science Facility was constructed. It houses collections space for the museum and laboratory space for several curators.
Read more about this topic: Peabody Museum Of Natural History
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“If you look at the 150 years of modern China’s history since the Opium Wars, then you can’t avoid the conclusion that the last 15 years are the best 15 years in China’s modern history.”
—J. Stapleton Roy (b. 1935)