The Yale Peabody Museum’s fossil plant holdings belong to 3 separate
collections, each with a different history. In addition to the original Yale
collection, there are two “orphaned” collections: the New
York Botanical Garden Collection, and the Princeton University Collection.
Well before the
establishment of the Museum in 1866, Yale’s first geologist Benjamin
Silliman assembled a teaching collection that included a substantial number
of fossil plants. On Silliman’s retirement in 1853, Yale purchased this
collection, and many of its specimens remain among the the holdings of the Paleobotany
Division today.
The Yale Peabody Museum’s paleobotany holdings
continued to grow throughout the late 1800s with the acquisition of several
important collections, including:
In the early 1890s O.C. Marsh
became interested in an extinct group of Mesozoic plants known as the cycadeoids
and instructed his agent, H.F. Wells, to begin acquiring them for Yale. Aiding
Marsh in this collecting was George R.
Wieland, the Peabody’s first paleobotanist. Wieland’s scientific interest in
these enigmatic fossil trunks flourished, and it is principally through his
efforts that the Museum accumulated over 1,000 specimens—the world’s largest
collection of cycadeoids.
Wieland is also responsible for assembling a
major collection of cycadeoid thin sections. This remarkable collection not only
includes mounted thin sections meticulously prepared by Wieland from cycadeoids
found in the Division’s holdings, but through his connections with European
scientists, Wieland acquired thin sections of invaluable, historic European
cycadeoids, including Bennettites gibsonianus, Cycadeoidea etrusca,
Cycadeoidea (Bennettites) morierei and Cycadeoidea
masseiana.
After Wieland’s retirement in the1940s the Peabody was
without a paleobotanist until 1962, when Theodore Delevoryas was appointed
Associate Curator. During his 10-year stay, Delevoryas expanded and enhanced the
collection with specimens of Triassic and Jurassic cycadophytes. After another
hiatus, Bruce Tiffney became Curator in 1977, and added several collections of
Mesozoic and Tertiary flowering plants.
In 1982, Leo J. Hickey came from
the Smithsonian Institution to assume directorship of the Yale Peabody Museum,
and to join Tiffney as Curator in the Division of Botany. Hickey brought with
him, and he and his students continue to amass, major collections of Cretaceous
and Tertiary angiosperm fossils. Tiffney left in 1986, leaving Hickey as
curator-in-charge of the paleobotanical collection. From 1989 until 2008 Linda
Klise served as the Paleobotany
Division’s first Collections Manager. In 2008 Dr. Shusheng Hu was hired as
the Division’s Collections Manager.
In June 2002 the Paleobotany
Division completed the monumental task of moving its entire collection of
over 150,000 fossil plants into the new state-of-the art facilities of in the Class of 1954 Environmental Science Center.
Once
housed in rows of rusted grayish green cases and overcrowded drawers, these
specimens are now in a bright new storage room in mobile open drawer units and
on mobile shelving. Previously stored in the Kline Geology Laboratory, many of
the oversized, heavy specimens had been tightly packed under deep, drab open
shelving. Because of their weight — some over 1,000 pounds (more than 450
kilograms) — they were partially concealed and inaccessible. These are now
stored on heavy duty pallet racking, and for the first time are visible and
accessible for research.
In support of this move, the Division of
Paleobotany was awarded a grant of $365,346 from the National Science Foundation
(DEB 9987475) to help purchase and install the mobile compact storage system and
hire personnel to assist in the move, reorganization and electronic cataloging
of the paleobotany collections. This grant project was completed in October 31,
2004.
