II FOSSIL VERTEBRATES— WHAT THEY TEACH 



Bi/ ir. n. Mnllhnr 



"The plan of the department (of Vertebrate Paheontology) as outlined by Professor 

 Osbom in the Annual Report for 1892, was to... present a historical development of the 

 Evolution of the Mammals in North America. It was expanded subsecpiently to cover the 

 evolution of the vertebraia in general, but its chief aim . . . has been to present the Evolution of 

 the Land Vertebrates, primarily of North America, but incidentally of other parts of the world." 

 Extract from the History, Plan and Scope of the American Museum of Natural History 



TIIK lii.story of xcrtchratc lite in North Aiiicrica: this is tlic funda- 

 mental concept in the e.\liil)its of fossil \ertehrates which occupy 

 three f^Tcat halls on the fourth floor, cast winj^, of the Museum. 



Pala'ontology, it has heen said, is hut history writ large. It is the 

 history not merely of man, hut of all life, projected l)ackward into a dim 

 past whose distance dwarfs to insignificance the few centuries of recorded 

 human e\'ents. In the history of mankind the modern view no longer 

 regards it as a mere chronicle of successive e\ents and disconnected episodes, 

 hut .seeks to trace the orderly and continuous development of primitive 

 races and conditions into the complex and elaborate civilizations of the 

 present day. The rise and fall of dynasties and kingdoms, the progress 

 and decline of races, their migrations and interaction on each other, the 

 qualities of mind and body and conditions of circumstance and environment 

 which bring about the sequence of historical events, all play their part both 

 as cause and effect, and each event is considered in relation to the causes 

 which preceded and the effects which followed it. 



So too in this larger history which traces the orflerly development of life 

 through the vast periods of geologic time. The continuity of life, and its 

 evolution under the impulse and control of natural law from primitive 

 beginnings to its present variety and complexity — the doctrine of evolu- 

 tion in its broader sense — is the keynote of modern palaeontology. 



In a historical museum we expect to find the documents, or some of 

 them, on which history is based. Some of the more important are on 

 exhibition, arranged and labeled so as to show what they mean. Most of 

 the records and documents are preserved in storage, catalogued and arranged 

 and made accessible to students. So with the documents of palaeontology, 

 the fossil skeletons, teeth and bones which record the former existence of 

 animals now extinct, and the earlier history of the races whicii now people 

 the earth. The more important specimens are placed on exhibition and 

 are pr()\ided with labels and diagrams. The great mass of the material 

 is in storage, accessible to scientific students. 



The three large halls devoted to fossil vertebrates n present in a broad 

 way successive geologic eras as marked out l)y their dominant forms of life. 

 In the central hall are placed the mammoth and mastodon, the great 

 ground sloths and other extinct giants of the Age of Man, with whom our 

 prehistoric ancestors disputed the dominion of the earth. 



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