A mere 3 percentage of the American Museum of Natural History ’s 33 million specimens and artefact are on sentiment at the New York City institution . We took a peek at the remainder , which live behind doors put away to the public . From extremist - rare Book to ancient bugs , here ’s some of the nerveless stuff we found .
1. A 20-million-year-old butterfly
Preserved in Dominican gold ( and a block of epoxy glue ) , thisVoltinia drambabutterfly is 20 million years sure-enough . “ butterfly are rare as fogy , ” state David Grimaldi , a curator in the invertebrate zoology naval division . “ They be given to live in areas that would n’t fossilise . The other understanding is that butterflies ’ wings are scaly and indulgent , and if they ’re caught in rosin , the exfoliation will come off before the wings actually get covered . ”
2. Insects in amber
The museum ’s amber aggregation is domiciliate in Grimaldi ’s office . While not huge , “ it is thick , ” he says . It ’s arranged fit in to deposit and then by chemical group — plants , insects , arthropod , arachnid . ( The draftsman pictured contains ants . ) The only gold on display is in the mineral Charles Francis Hall ; the part with insects in them do n’t go on exhibit for preservation reasons — they have to be kept disconsolate and in controlled temperatures and humidity .
3. The rare-book room
We ca n’t lecture about the operation necessary to recruit AMNH ’s rarified - book room , but we can say that they would n’t seem out of place in aMission : Impossiblemovie . Like many other behind - the - scenes areas of the museum , the elbow room is climate- and humidity - controlled , and ignitor are commonly dip . long time and oddment are two thing that factor into a decision to position a book into rare folio , sound out Thomas Baione , Harold Boeschenstein director of the department of subroutine library services .
4. Watercolor fish
Stored in this room are 48 one - of - a - kind watercolors of fish by creative person William Belanske , made during three outing to the Galapagos on a yacht belong to William K. Vanderbilt ( yes , of those Vanderbilts ) . create in the former ’ 20 , the elaborated miniature illustrations — some as tiny as 7 centimeters — were put into a book privately published by Vanderbilt . This original water-colour of this silver hatchet fish ( Argyropelecus lychus Garman ) note that the fish was “ taken in dredge , 50 mile S.W. of Cape Mala , Panama , Pacific Ocean , 300 fthm below the surface ” on March 16 , 1926 .
5. A very large gem
This giant gem — a 21,000 carat light blue tan called the Brazilian Princess — was cut in the late seventies , just to try out it could be done , allot to George Harlow , conservator of the division of physical sciences . “ It was the largest stone ever fashion , ” he say . “ so as to rationalize a stone , you have to be able-bodied to hold it and put it on a moil wheel to smooth it . That was the challenge at the time . ” Machinery had to be created to do the work . Since then , big gem have been switch off , mostly out of smokey quartz , so it ’s no longer the record holder . But it ’s so huge that “ we had a design that when the Statue of Liberty had its centenary , a jewelry couturier was hold out to come up with a tintinnabulation mount to go on the [ statue ’s ] finger , ” Harlow say .
6. A 1000-year-old frog
Discovered by a museum squad in 1897 in Pueblo Bonito — one of the largest hereditary Pueblo settlements in New Mexico ’s Chaco Canyon — this jet and turquoise toad frog is roughly 1000 long time old . Shortly after its discovery , the frog disappear . An AMNH coordinator found it at a trading postal service 50 miles north , purchased it , and take back it to the museum . Looting at Chaco Canyon urge the Antiquities Act of 1906 , signed by President Theodore Roosevelt , which protect the situation and others like it . Part of the archaeology collection , the toad frog — which symbolise water for the ancestral Pueblo people — is not on display because “ at the instant , we do n’t have a Hall of SouthWestern American Indians , ” says Paul Beelitz , Director of Collections and Archives - Anthropology .
7. A Tasmanian tiger
Though it exit by a telephone number of names — including Tasmanian tiger , zebra cad , and pouched wolf , among others — Thylacinus cynocephaluswas actually a marsupial . This animate being ( one of 12 thylacine specimens in AMNH ’s collection ) lived at the Bronx Zoo . After it died in 1920 , it was given to the museum and mounted . Neil Duncan , Collections Manager of Mammalogy , says he believes this frequently - photographed specimen will be “ the iconic piece of the section . ” Like a human ’s fingerprints , each Tasmanian wolf ’s stripes were unique to that individual . The species is now considered extinct ; the last of its form died in an Australian zoo in 1936 .
8. A great auk Mount
Before it became out , the flightless great auk lived in the North Atlantic , on low - lying island off Newfoundland and Iceland . “ The word penguin primitively utilize to this bird , ” say Paul Sweet , a collections manager . “ Its scientific name is Pinguinus . When sailors went down to the Southern Hemisphere , they reckon birds that looked superficially like [ with child auks ] , and they foretell them penguin . ” The last two auks were killed in 1844 ; approximately 60 specimen remain — admit this one , the Bonaparte auk , which at one spot belong to Napoleon ’s nephew , Lucien , an bird watcher .
9. A giant squid beak
In 1998 , the museum get a manful jumbo squid specimen , which had been accidentally charm by fisher off the coast of New Zealand . The 25 - foot - long animal is stored in a jumbo steel tank in the museum ’s invertebrates department . But its beak is in a unlike place : the office of Neil H. Landman , curator of the division of paleontology , where it sits in a shock make full with alcoholic drink to keep it from becoming brickle . “ It does n’t really need to be in a jar this big , ” read Susan Klofak , a fourth-year museum technician , “ but we did require a jar that was this wide - mouthed . ”
Here’s a video we shot while we were at the museum!
Mental Floss and The American Museum of Natural HistoryfromJoshua Scott Photo NYConVimeo .
Photos by Joshua Scott .
