Natural History Museums Are Teeming With Undiscovered Species
Via @theatlantic:
“Evon Hekkala, a geneticist at Fordham University, is an evangelist for natural history museums and the many secrets that are still locked within their drawers and dioramas…It’s easy to view such collections as soulless stashes, examples of humanity’s hoarding instinct unleashed upon the natural world, turning vibrant menageries into dead zoos, and living, breathing, mating, hunting, fighting creatures into mere specimens, dissembled and dissected, posed in dioramas, pinned in drawers, crammed into cabinets, and stuffed into jars. But to Hekkala and many other scientists, these hoards are full of riches still. They are time capsules that contain records of past ecosystems that are rapidly changing or disappearing. They are archives that provide clues about raging epidemics, environmental pollution, and hidden extinctions. And they are full of unknown species—like the sacred crocodile.”
Read the full story from The Atlantic, and see the Musuem’s own tale of discovering a new species in a collection drawer:
