AMNH Digital Special Collections

I recently discovered an incredible resource on the website of the American Museum of Natural History: the Digital Special Collections.

It's a browsable and searchable archive of thousands of images from the museum's library: technical illustrations, photos from museum expeditions, and -- most dear to my heart -- photographs of long-gone exhibits and of exhibits under construction.

Here are two of my favourites. The information I've provided comes from a terrific book about the AMNH called Dinosaurs in the Attic.

This is a skeleton in the process of being mounted by the great osteologist Samuel Harmstead Chubb. It's the last mount he completed before he died in 1949: a donkey turning his neck to nibble at botfly eggs on his hind leg. Chubb is mounting the skeleton using his system of suspending each bone from a scaffold and making tiny adjustments until it's in exactly the right position.

Here's a photo from the Life Magazine archives of Chubb with the nearly-completed mount.

This is a social weaver bird nest in the final stage of installation in the Biology of Birds Hall. A whole flock of these birds will collectively build one huge thatched nest, and add to it each year. This particular nest -- as well as the crown of the acacia tree it was built in -- was collected in South Africa in 1925 by ornithologist Herbert Friedmann.

There are plenty more images to be discovered. Go explore!

Source:
Preston, D.J. 1986. Dinosaurs in the Attic: An Excursion Into the American Museum of Natural History. Ballantine Books, New York, 308 pp.