The Texas Memorial Museum, located on the campus of the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...

, USA, was created during preparations for the Texas Centennial Exposition held in 1936. The museum's focus is on natural history, including

paleontology Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

geology Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other Astronomical object, astronomical objects, the features or rock (geology), rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology ...

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary ...

herpetology Herpetology (from Greek ἑρπετόν ''herpetón'', meaning "reptile" or "creeping animal") is the branch of zoology concerned with the study of amphibians (including frogs, toads, salamanders, newts, and caecilians ( gymnophiona)) and ...

ichthyology Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish, including bony fish ( Osteichthyes), cartilaginous fish ( Chondrichthyes), and jawless fish ( Agnatha). According to FishBase, 33,400 species of fish had been described as of Oct ...

and

entomology Entomology () is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past the term "insect" was less specific, and historically the definition of entomology would also include the study of animals in other arthropod groups, such as ara ...

. At one point, the museum also had exhibits on Texas history, anthropology, geography, and ethnography, but these were relocated to other museums (including the Bullock Texas State History Museum) in 2001. The building was designed in the

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unit ...

style by John F. Staub, with Paul Cret as supervising architect. Ground was broken for the building by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1936. The museum was opened on January 15, 1939. The museum won "Best of Austin" awards from the ''

Austin Chronicle ''The Austin Chronicle'' is an alternative weekly newspaper published every Thursday in Austin, Texas, United States. The paper is distributed through free news-stands, often at local eateries or coffee houses frequented by its targeted demogra ...

'' in 2002, 2005, and 2012. In October 2013, Linda Hicke, the dean of Austin's College of Natural Sciences, cut the museum's funding by $400,000 and transferred ownership to the American Legion Texas Branch. The staff was reduced from twelve employees to three: a security guard, a gift shop operator and one other employee.

Wichita County Meteorite

In 1723, the

Comanche The Comanche or Nʉmʉnʉʉ ( com, Nʉmʉnʉʉ, "the people") are a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in ...

defeated the

Lipan Apache people Lipan Apache are a band of Apache, a Southern Athabaskan Indigenous people, who have lived in the Southwest and Southern Plains for centuries. At the time of European and African contact, they lived in New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texa ...

in a nine-day battle along the Rio del Fierro ( Wichita River). The River of Iron may be the location written about by Athanase De Mezieres in 1772, containing "a mass of metal which the Indians say is hard, thick, heavy, and composed of iron", which they "venerate...as an extraordinary manifestation of nature", the Comanche's calling it "Ta-pic-ta-carre tanding rock Po-i-wisht-carre tanding metal or Po-a-cat-le-pi-le-carre edicine rock, the general area containing a "large number of meteoric masses". The Wichita County

meteorite A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid, that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or moon. When the original object ...

originally weighed 145 kg and was obtained by Major

Robert Neighbors Robert Simpson Neighbors (November 3, 1815 – September 14, 1859) was an Indian agent and Texas state legislator. Known as a fair and determined protector of Indian interests as guaranteed by treaty, he was murdered for his beliefs by a Texan ...

,Neighbors, K.F., 1975, ''Robert Neighbors and the Texas Frontier, 1836-1859'', Waco: Texian Press, p. 65 and 172 US Indian agent at Fort Belknap, in 1858-1859, who presented it to the State Cabinet, and was displayed in the old Capitol building before it burned down, when this Coarse Octahedrite was turned over to the University of Texas. According to Neighbors, "When the meteorite was conveyed to the Indian reserve, the Comanches collected in great numbers around their valued medicine stone and, whilst manifesting their attachment by rubbing their arms, hands, and chests over it, earnestly besought Major Neighbors to permit them to keep it at the agency." A sister meteorite weighing 742 kg, the Red River meteorite, was discovered in 1808 but this Medium Octahedrite now resides in the

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

Peabody Museum of Natural History The Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University is among the oldest, largest, and most prolific university natural history museums in the world. It was founded by the philanthropist George Peabody in 1866 at the behest of his nephew Oth ...

References

Bibliography

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External links

Official website of the TMMRed River Meteorite
{{authority control Museums in Austin, Texas Natural history museums in Texas University of Texas at Austin University museums in Texas Paul Philippe Cret buildings University of Texas at Austin campus Paleontology in Texas Museums established in 1939 1939 establishments in Texas University and college buildings completed in 1939