Have you ever heard of the “luck of the Irish?” ☘️ Well, this deer didn’t have it. Meet the Irish Elk, Megaloceros giganteus. It was originally discovered in bog deposits in Ireland. Once ranging from western Europe to China, this animal went extinct during the Pleistocene some 10,000 years ago. It was one of the largest known species of deer, weighing up to 1,500 pounds (680 kg). Its antlers, which could reach an incredible 13-foot- (4-m-) spread, were used in ritualized combat between males. Photo: M. Pelczar © AMNH #paleontology #fossils #history #naturalhistory #museum #amnh https://www.instagram.com/p/Cp5Kk0PL_7Y/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

🎞️Here’s a festive #TBT photo from 1969! On this Thanksgiving, the world-famous parade passed the Museum’s 77th Street turret with a very special float: a sauropod dinosaur. 🦕This inflatable Apatosaurus measured an impressive 60 feet long! The giant green dinosaur featured big eyes, a wide grin, and a 20-foot tail. The original Apatosaurus balloon made its first parade debut in 1963 and was retired from service in 1976. Photo: Image no. 62158_21a, © AMNH Library #amnh #Thanksgiving #Apatosaurus #dinosaurs #MacysParade #ThrowbackThursday #nyc #NewYorkCity #history https://www.instagram.com/p/ClWWiuxLYB7/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Egyptian coffins often were customized; the name of the person who died was written on the lid in hieroglyphs. The scene at the top of this coffin shows the god Thoth introducing the deceased man to the god Osiris. But the area above the man’s head, where his name should be, is blank. This coffin probably was purchased from a coffin shop, not specially commissioned, and the name of the person inside was never added. Explore Mummies.  

©AMNH/C. Chesek

To expand the Museum’s educational mission beyond its walls, a lantern slide lending library was created and formed the basis of the Natural Science Study Collections which the Museum delivered to New York schools. The lantern slides, reproduced from the growing collection of photographs created and collected by the Museum staff, were originally used to illustrate lectures given to the public at the Museum. The lectures were so successful that a new and larger theater was constructed in 1900 to accommodate the growing crowds. The hand-colored lantern slides shown in this collection range in topic from scenes in the Museum to newly arrived families at Ellis Island - offering a view into the history of science as well as the history of New York City. These beautifully colored images detail the art behind this fascinating photographic process and showcase for future generations science and culture from over a century ago. Explore more lantern slides. 

On June 2, 1874, President Ulysses S. Grant laid the cornerstone for the Museum’s first building at 77th Street. Up until this point, the Museum had occupied space in the Central Park Arsenal but quickly outgrew that space, and secured Manhattan Square, a block of land across the street from Central Park, between West 77th and 81st Streets.

From an article in the June 3, 1874 New York Tribune:

“The ceremony was performed by the President, who with handsomely silver-mounted trowel spread the mortar over the box and covered it from sight. As the stone was lowered over it, the President struck it with the trowel three times.”

Learn more about the Museum’s nearly 150-year history.

To expand the Museum’s educational mission beyond its walls, a lantern slide lending library was created and formed the basis of the Natural Science Study Collections which the Museum delivered to New York schools. The lantern slides, reproduced from the growing collection of photographs created and collected by the Museum staff, were originally used to illustrate lectures given to the public at the Museum. The lectures were so successful that a new and larger theater was constructed in 1900 to accommodate the growing crowds. The hand-colored lantern slides shown in this collection range in topic from scenes in the Museum to newly arrived families at Ellis Island - offering a view into the history of science as well as the history of New York City. These beautifully colored images detail the art behind this fascinating photographic process and showcase for future generations science and culture from over a century ago.

See more in the Museum archives. 

Women In Museum History: Francesca LaMonte

Assistant Curator of Ichthyology Francesca Lamonte, who worked at the Museum from 1920 to 1962 and specialized in marlins and swordfish, was Ernest Hemingway’s go-to fish authority, and according to a 1952 edition of The Long Island Press, a “general big-game whiz bang.”

LaMonte joined the Museum two years out of college, beginning her career translating scientific papers from French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Russian into English before being promoted to curator nine years later. During her time at the Museum, LaMonte became one of the world’s leading experts on big game fish and was a key player in the founding of the International Game Fish Association (IGFA), a group dedicated to game fish conservation and responsible sport-fishing. The IGFA, which had its first home here at the Museum, still exists today.

As both a curator and member of IGFA, LaMonte participated in a number of ichthyological expeditions. Her specialty was game fish like marlins and swordfish, species about which she published numerous scientific papers. LaMonte was also a prolific writer of game-fishing guides that were acclaimed best-sellers amongst the angling set,and penned vivid accounts of Museum expeditions. In a 1940 issue of Natural History, she described a trip to collect swordfish off of northern Chile:

Just three days through the air from the heat of a Miami June, and we are in the chill of a West Coast winter. Two fishing boats stand in the harbor of Tocopilla waiting for our expedition. All around them the water is alive with anchovies, and the neighboring boats are obscured by flocks of birds swooping down to feed on the small blue-and-silver fishes.

LaMonte’s work as a scientist and writer earned her admiration from some literary lions. Read more about it on the Museum blog. 

A peek into the Museum archives: Students from P.S. 62 examining minerals and rocks in Nature Room. Photographed by Julius Kirschner in 1921. 

See over 10,000 historical Museum images in the Digital Special Collections.

AMNH/38976

On November 25, 1915, visionary physicist Albert Einstein set down the general theory of relativity. Via The New York Times:

Ready to learn more? Get to know Albert Einstein, the physicist and passionate humanitarian in our traveling exhibition, and listen to our recent Frontiers Lecture: What is Relativity and Why Should You Care? Astrophysicist and educator Jeffrey Bennett introduces the basic tenets of Einstein's theory, and underscores its importance to our modern understanding of the universe.

Listen to the podcast on SoundCloud. 

Turquoise is a gemstone with two probable firsts--first to be mined and first to be imitated. Indirect evidence suggests that the Wadi Maghara and Serabit el-Khadem mines on the Sinai Peninsula were in production before 3100 BCE. Egyptian turquoise beads dating to 4000 BCE have been found at al-Badari.

By 3100 BCE, either supplies were not meeting demand or a cheaper substitute was desired, because imitations (soapstone glazed blue and green---a form of faience) are found as artifacts of this period. 

Learn more in the 25th-anniversary edition of Gems & Crystals From One of the World’s Great Collections by George E. Harlow, curator in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and gemology expert Anna S. Sofianides, featuring photography by Erica and Harold Van Pelt, published this month by Sterling Publishing Company.

An illustration of marine siphonophores. Apart from the artistic merits of this plate from Francois Peron’s Voyage de decouvertes aux terres australes…(1807-1816), it is remarkable that Peron collected intact these highly fragile marine siphonophores, which easily break into pieces at the slightest touch. 

See this 45 other exquisite reproductions from 33 rare and beautifully illustrated scientific works in the exhibition, Opulent Oceans: Extraordinary Scientific Illustrations from the Museum’s Library, now open!

Today’s peek into the Museum archives: “Boy selecting lantern slides for project at Speyer School, Slide Library, 1920″ photographed by Julius Kirschner. 

To expand the Museum’s educational mission beyond its walls, a lantern slide lending library was created and formed the basis of the Natural Science Study Collections which the Museum delivered to New York schools. The lantern slides, reproduced from the growing collection of photographs created and collected by the Museum staff, were originally used to illustrate lectures given to the public at the Museum.

The hand-colored lantern slides shown in this collection range in topic from scenes in the Museum to newly arrived families at Ellis Island - offering a view into the history of science as well as the history of New York City. These beautifully colored images detail the art behind this fascinating photographic process and showcase for future generations science and culture from over a century ago.

See a digitized selection of these lantern slides. 

AMNH/239767

This plate by acclaimed artist William Dickes is from Philip Henry Gosse’s influential Actinologia Britannica: a history of the British sea anemones and corals (1860) and features stinging anemones that often attach themselves to hermit crab shells. They protect the crab while eating scraps of its food.

See this 45 other exquisite reproductions from 33 rare and beautifully illustrated scientific works in the exhibition, Opulent Oceans: Extraordinary Scientific Illustrations from the Museum’s Library, now open!

AMNH\R. Mickens

Today through October 3, experience the Museum’s historic Hall of Northwest Coast Indians in a new way as Haida artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas brings Pacific Northwest Coast art to life through stories, illustrated books, animated films, and interactive artwork during a special residency this week.

Schedule:

Thursday, October 1, 12:30–5:45pm

Friday, October 2, 11:30 am–2:30 pm

Saturday, October 3, 11:30 am-5:45 pm

Learn more about this artist in residence. 

Alfred Kinsey is best known for his groundbreaking work in human sexuality, but he came to this specialty relatively late in his career. For the first act of his academic life, Kinsey studied entomology and botany. In particular, he studied gall wasps: tiny, solitary wasps who inject their eggs into plant tissues, inducing growths known as “galls” that provide food and protection to their larvae.

When analyzing his growing gall wasp collection, Kinsey demonstrated his penchant for big data and honed some of the methods he would refine in his study of human sexuality. For example, Kinsey took up to dozens of measurements on each of his wasp specimens—no small feat when you consider that even the largest specimens only grow to be 8 millimeters long. He meticulously recorded the data on sheets and sheets of graph paper, covered in notations, and later in his entomological research developed a system of coded entry, pictured above.

He carried this experience encoding data into his work on human sexuality, where it allowed him to distill hour-long interviews detailing an individual’s entire sexual history to a handful of lined cards.

Learn more about Kinsey and his gall wasps in Episode 9 of Shelf Life:

Antarctic octopus by Fritz Winter from Chun's Die Cephalopoden (Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der Deutschen Tiefsee-Expedition), published 1900. 

See more cephalopods and sea creatures in our new online exhibit, Opulent Oceans.

AMNH/b1047635

There was a time when people who wanted to read Charles Darwin’s scientific papers—the portfolios of notes, observations, essays, and more that would help the great naturalist articulate his radical idea of natural selection in On the Origin of Species—had to travel to England and visit a reading room at Cambridge University.

Since 2006, a wealth of primary materials has been digitized and brought online, available to anyone with an interest and an internet connection. The Museum’s Darwin Manuscripts Project, working closely with Cambridge University Library, has made available some 26,000 pages written between 1835 and 1882 at darwin.amnh.org. The documents, posted as high-resolution, full-color images, form a record of a scientist at work.

And then there are the more intimate items, which offer a glimpse into Darwin’s daily life: for example, the Darwin Manuscripts Project includes dozens of colorful drawings made by Darwin’s children on the backs of loose leaf pages, some with their father’s writing on the other side. 

The sketches, which range from fanciful battles between vegetables to an imagined family crest, likely helped preserve manuscript pages for posterity, says Kohn. “You also see in these drawings how thin the line of separation was between Darwin at work and home and family,” says Kohn.

Read more on the Museum blog.