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 The
collection and exhibition of fossil vertebrates at Carnegie Museum
of Natural History date to its grand opening in 1895, when the Museum
put on exhibit a giant Irish elk purchased from the British Museum.
Added to the displays in the following year was a nearly complete
skeleton of an American mastodon, which turned out to be very popular,
attracting some 500,000 visitors each year to the Museum in its early
years.
A great leap forward for the vertebrate fossil collections and exhibitions occurred in 1898, when dinosaurs first attracted the attention of Andrew Carnegie. Mr. Carnegie wrote to the Museum’s first director, Dr. W. J. Holland, instructing him to “get one [dinosaur] for Pittsburgh.” In 1899 Mr. Carnegie placed funds at Holland’s disposal for paleontological research in the Rocky Mountain region. Jacob Wortman, the first curator of vertebrate paleontology at CMNH, was soon hired to search for dinosaurs in the Morrison Formation at Sheep Creek, Wyoming. Later that year Wortman discovered three skeletons of the sauropod Diplodocus, one of which was designated as the type specimen of Diplodocus carnegii by Hatcher in 1901. Carnegie Museum of Natural History's quest for dinosaurs quickly moved to Colorado, where a new curator, John Bell Hatcher, joined by Charles W. Gilmore in 1901 and William H. Utterback in 1902, were soon shipping carloads of fossils back to Pittsburgh. Earl Douglass joined the Carnegie paleontologists in 1902. His field work took him to northeastern Utah, where he discovered the spectacular assemblages of dinosaur bones in the Morrison Formation that are now Dinosaur National Monument. |
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In 1942, Carnegie Museum of Natural History purchased from the American Museum of Natural History the type specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex, the largest carnivore known to have ever lived on earth. Tyrannosaurus rex, on display in Dinosaurs in Their Time, has inspired numerous popular icons, from the children’s beloved “Barney” to the most fearsome predator that was the star in the movie “Jurassic Park.” |
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In
a judicious move in 1903, Holland had Carnegie purchase from a European
private collector the Bayet Collection of fossil plants, invertebrates,
and vertebrates. This brought to Carnegie Museum of Natural History
the Western Hemisphere’s finest Jurassic pterosaurs and fishes
from the Bavarian Solnhofen Limestone, as well as vertebrates from
other famous European localities, such as Cerin (Jurassic of France)
and Monte Bolca (Eocene of Italy).
Early exploration by the Museum’s vertebrate paleontologists also accumulated fossil mammals from the Tertiary of Montana and Nebraska. In 1905, curator and field collector O. A. Peterson found some incredibly rich deposits of Miocene mammals in a region in western Nebraska, which have now become the Agate Springs Fossil Beds National Monument. From the 1930s through the 1950s field work continued primarily in Montana and Utah, where Curator J. Leroy Kay pursued Eocene and Oligocene vertebrates. His many assistants, including John Burke, William Moran, John Guilday, John Dorr, and John Clark, did research on a great diversity of fossil vertebrates. In 1960 Craig Black joined the curatorial staff, reviving the Museum’s collecting and research in the Eocene of Wyoming, an enterprise that has continued with Mary Dawson, Leonard Krishtalka, Richard Stucky, and Chris Beard. David Berman has pursued collecting and studying Paleozoic vertebrates. Quaternary studies were pursued by John Guilday and Tony Barnosky. Zhe-Xi Luo investigates mammal-like reptiles and mammals from the Triassic and Jurassic, and the evolution of hearing in Tertiary whales. |
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 Today the collections include approximately 103,000 specimens, ranging in age from Late Silurian to Quaternary, and encompassing all vertebrate classes from Agnatha through Mammalia. Of these, 376 are primary types. Particularly outstanding are holdings of: - Permo–Carboniferous
fishes and tetrapods from the tristate (western Pennsylvania, eastern
Ohio, West Virginia), mid-continent (Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma), and
Four Corners (New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado) |
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Carnegie
Museum of Natural History is the home of two of the world’s
most famous dinosaurs, Diplodocus carnegii and Tyrannosaurus
rex. Diplodocus carnegii was not only the best (almost
complete) dinosaur skeleton known in the 1900s, but also the largest
land animal known at that time. At the prompting of King Edward
VII of England, Andrew Carnegie instructed Holland and Hatcher to
duplicate a cast of Diplodocus carnegii for the British Museum,
thus beginning an unprecedented effort by this Museum to give nine
replicas of Diplodocus carnegii as gifts to other prominent
museums in Europe and Latin America. Mr. Carnegie’s generosity
made Diplodocus the most celebrated dinosaur of the early
20th century.
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For
updated information, contact Collection Manager Amy Henrici. Phone: (412) 622-1915 Email: henricia@carnegiemnh.org |
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Museum Research Home | Carnegie Museum of Natural History Home |
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