The Georgia Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as GMNH) is the U.S. state of Georgia's museum of

natural history Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...

located in

Athens, Georgia Athens is a consolidated city-county in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. Downtown Athens lies about northeast of downtown Atlanta. The University of Georgia, the state's flagship public university and an Research I university, ...

. The museum has eleven different collections in

Anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...

Arthropods Arthropods ( ) are invertebrates in the phylum Arthropoda. They possess an arthropod exoskeleton, exoskeleton with a cuticle made of chitin, often Mineralization (biology), mineralised with calcium carbonate, a body with differentiated (Metam ...

Botany Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

Geology Geology (). is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical objects, the rocks of which they are composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth ...

Herpetology Herpetology (from Ancient Greek ἑρπετόν ''herpetón'', meaning "reptile" or "creeping animal") is a branch of zoology concerned with the study of amphibians (including frogs, salamanders, and caecilians (Gymnophiona)) and reptiles (in ...

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, 35,800 species of fish had been described as of March 2 ...

Invertebrate Invertebrates are animals that neither develop nor retain a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''spine'' or ''backbone''), which evolved from the notochord. It is a paraphyletic grouping including all animals excluding the chordata, chordate s ...

Mammalogy In zoology, mammalogy is the study of mammals – a class of vertebrates with characteristics such as homeothermic metabolism, fur, four-chambered hearts, and complex nervous systems. The archive of number of mammals on earth is constantly growi ...

Mycology Mycology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungus, fungi, including their Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, genetics, biochemistry, biochemical properties, and ethnomycology, use by humans. Fungi can be a source of tinder, Edible ...

Ornithology Ornithology, from Ancient Greek ὄρνις (''órnis''), meaning "bird", and -logy from λόγος (''lógos''), meaning "study", is a branch of zoology dedicated to the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related discip ...

, and

Zooarchaeology Zooarchaeology or archaeozoology merges the disciplines of zoology and archaeology, focusing on the analysis of animal remains within archaeological sites. This field, managed by specialists known as zooarchaeologists or faunal analysts, examines ...

. In addition, there are exhibitions, archives, and entertainment for children. The Exhibit Gallery is free and open to the public during scheduled hours. People can schedule a tour to visit the collections by appointment. The museum staff deliver on thousands of information and loan requests annually. Most of these originate within Georgia from agencies such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Service,

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is the military engineering branch of the United States Army. A direct reporting unit (DRU), it has three primary mission areas: Engineer Regiment, military construction, and civil wor ...

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it began operation on De ...

, U.S. Forestry Service, Cooperative Extension Service,

Georgia Department of Natural Resources The Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is an administrative agency of the U.S. state of Georgia. Structure The agency has statewide responsibilities for managing and conserving Georgia’s natural, cultural, and historical resource ...

, Georgia Forestry Commission, and

Georgia Department of Transportation The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) is the organization in charge of developing and maintaining all state and federal roadways in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. In addition to highways, the department also has a li ...

, as well as from private organizations and the general public. The GMNH provides natural history education opportunities to the public and its surrounding communities in addition to assisting in research endeavors. The museum also has an Internship Program that provides

University of Georgia The University of Georgia (UGA or Georgia) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university with its main campus in Athens, Georgia, United States. Chartered in 1785, it is the oldest public university in th ...

(UGA) undergraduates with hands-on collections experience. In 1999, GMNH was recognized as the official state museum of natural history by the Georgia General Assembly.

History

The museum was formally recognized by the university in 1978 as the Museum of Natural History. It was renamed as it the Georgia Museum of Natural History in 1999. However, some of the items in its collections were obtained in the early 19th century. The museum's earlier history has recently been uncovered. In 1801,

Josiah Meigs Josiah Meigs (August 21, 1757 – September 4, 1822) was an American academic, journalist, and government official. He was the first acting president of the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, Athens, where he implemented the university's f ...

started gathering items for a natural history collection at UGA. Henry Jackson contributed minerals and scientific equipment from France in 1817, and in 1824 a collection of minerals was donated, which prompted the need for a mineralogical cabinet. UGA's Philosophical Hall, built in 1821, was the first official house of the museum. New College was built in 1823 to accommodate the growing collections, so it housed the collections until 1830 when a fire destroyed the building and everything in it. Malthus Ward established the

Botanical Garden A botanical garden or botanic gardenThe terms ''botanic'' and ''botanical'' and ''garden'' or ''gardens'' are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word ''botanic'' is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens. is ...

at the university in 1831, and James Jackson continued to contribute to the Botanical Garden after Ward retired. The university put forth $500 for a new mineralogical cabinet in the newly built Ivy Building in 1832. In 1834, a natural history professor got $150 for the collection of plants for the Botanical Garden and also increased the mineral collection. The mineral collection in particular grew rapidly in the late 1830s, but not much changed with the museum in the 1940s. In 1856 the Botanical Gardens were sold, and the money was used to build the iron fence and famous Arch that still surrounds UGA's North Campus today. The Library Building was built in 1859 near the Ivy Building, and the museum collections were moved to the 3rd floor of the new building in 1862, alongside many murals. Throughout the 1860s and 1870s, the collections grew so large that they became a difficult task to accommodate. UGA Chancellor Andrew Lipscomb contributed to the ornithology collection and worked closely with Dr. Wilson, one of the museum's staff members, to clean and stuff specimens for the collections. The museum was sent many small donations of antiquities and other items, such as George R. Gilmer's gift of his library and mineral cabinet in 1866. And, in 1880 the Claiborne fossils were added to the museum's collection. The museum's natural history collection numbered well over 300 specimens by 1880, and it encompasses more than 7 to 8 million specimens today. The museum's history between 1900 and 1978 is largely unknown, but the groundwork for further research into it has been laid.

Education and outreach

The GMNH Education and Outreach Program provides events, exhibits, Science Boxes, workshops, tours, and more to its surrounding community in order to answer the public's questions about the natural world that surrounds them. The Science Box Project provides materials such as artifacts, posters, games, videos, books, and other objects on a specific topic in natural history to K-8 teachers. Tours of the museum and/or its collections are offered to special interest groups and schools in the region. The GMNH website also provides virtual slide shows of the Habitats of Georgia under the Education tab to inform the site's visitors about the different diverse regions and the environmental issues the different habitats face. The Friends of the GMNH also play a role in supporting the museum's education and outreach initiatives through fundraising, raising awareness, and more.

Internship program

The GMNH offers an internship program for the

's undergraduate students to gain experience working with the museum collections in the fall, spring, and summer semesters. Interns earn either 3 or 4 credit hours and can fulfill UGA's Experiential Learning requirement through the program. Collections available for internships are Archaeology, Entomology, Geology, Herbarium, Herpetology, Ichthyology, Invertebrate, Mammalogy, Mycology, and Ornithology. The number of interns accepted for each collection is limited, and some collections may not take interns in a given semester. Interns learn about natural history museums and collections by working closely with GMNH staff for a total of roughly 105 hours over the semester. They participate in museum activities such as collection, identification, preparation, categorization, and curation.They can also participate in tours, outreach presentations, field trips, exhibition preparation, and other special events.

Collections

Each of the museum's collections are the largest of its kind in

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

, and the collections are linked by GMNH to research, public service, and educational programs. The specimens in the collections are important for student and professional research and for public edification, as it is visited by roughly 100 scientists that use the collections in their research. Each collection is professionally managed by specialists. GMNH provides information and specimen loans to researchers worldwide. The Anthropology Collection is made up of

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other raw materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. The place where such wares are made by a ''potter'' is al ...

and various remains, adding up to a total of over 3 million artifacts and specimens, making it the most extensive in the state. The collection is housed in the Archaeology Laboratory, which is part of the UGA Department of Anthropology. The Arthropods Collection is part of the Entomology Department at UGA, and it houses more than 1 million pinned and alcohol-preserved insect specimens. The majority of the collection is from the southeast U.S. and is determined to a species. The Botany Collection is one of the largest collections of plant samples in the southeastern United States. Agencies and persons throughout the nation turn to this Department of Plant Biology Herbarium for identification assistance. This Herbarium is part of the UGA Department of Plant Biology. The Geology Collection is made up of three smaller collections: the Allard Collection for Economic Geology, the Mineralogy Collection, and the Paleontology Collection. Together, these collections comprise over 33,500 specimens, fossils, and casts, and the Allard Collection is available online. The Geology Collection is part of the UGA Department of Geology. The Herpetology Collection began being organized in 1940 and now houses over 46,000

reptile Reptiles, as commonly defined, are a group of tetrapods with an ectothermic metabolism and Amniotic egg, amniotic development. Living traditional reptiles comprise four Order (biology), orders: Testudines, Crocodilia, Squamata, and Rhynchocepha ...

and

amphibian Amphibians are ectothermic, anamniote, anamniotic, tetrapod, four-limbed vertebrate animals that constitute the class (biology), class Amphibia. In its broadest sense, it is a paraphyletic group encompassing all Tetrapod, tetrapods, but excl ...

specimens that comprise most of the species in the Southeast. The Ichthyology Collection started growing in the 1940s and now houses over 825 different species of fish in over 325,000 bottled specimens. These alcohol-preserved tissues provide greater accessibility for evaluation of genomic diversity in these specimens. The Collection includes multiple endangered or rare freshwater fish from the Southeast. The Invertebrate Collection houses over 10,000 freshwater mussels along with multiple catalogued non-insects and a diverse collection from Gray's Reef. While newer specimens are available for genomic work, many of the Collection's specimens are extinct or endangered. The Mammalogy Collection started in the 1940s and thus contains specimens from the early 1900s that provide a better historical lens into the mammals of the state over time. The Collection houses over 25,000 specimens such as skins, skeletal material, and preserved mammals, and it's one of the few mammal collections accredited by the

American Society of Mammalogists The American Society of Mammalogists (ASM) was founded in 1919. Its primary purpose is to encourage the study of mammal A mammal () is a vertebrate animal of the Class (biology), class Mammalia (). Mammals are characterised by the presence ...

. The Mycology Collection houses over 30,000 specimens of fungi from the Southeast and other parts of the world and is particularly rich in

ascomycetes Ascomycota is a phylum of the kingdom Fungi that, together with the Basidiomycota, forms the subkingdom Dikarya. Its members are commonly known as the sac fungi or ascomycetes. It is the largest phylum of Fungi, with over 64,000 species. The de ...

of Georgia and the tropical Americas. This Mycological Herbarium is an internationally recognized repository for research projects conducted by the

U.S. Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is an executive department of the United States federal government that aims to meet the needs of commercial farming and livestock food production, promotes agricultural trade and production ...

, and it's one of the few significant collections of its kind in the country. The Ornithology Collection was formed in the 1940s but began being collected before then, and it now houses over 5,650 specimens of mostly study skins in addition to 800 bird egg clutches from around the world. The specimens are collected mainly from previously rural and now urban areas of Georgia and partly from areas under siege due to destruction of rainforests in

Central America Central America is a subregion of North America. Its political boundaries are defined as bordering Mexico to the north, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest. Central America is usually ...

. The Zooarchaeology Collection is used to identify animal remains for universities, museums, and government agencies throughout the Southeast, the

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

, and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

. It houses over 4,100 fish, amphibian, reptile, bird, and mammal skeletal specimens. This Zooarchaeology Laboratory is part of the UGA Department of Anthropology.

References

External links