236 



NATURE 



[April 21, 192 1 



The Hall of the Age of Man in the American MuseumJ 

 By Prof, Henry Fairfield Osbokn. 



AN important event in the American Museum 

 of Natural History is the approaching com- 

 pletion of the Hall of the Age of Man. This hall 

 has been planned as a climax to the series of 

 collections in invertebrate and vertebrate palaeon- 

 tology, arranged so that the student or visitor 

 will begin with the Hall of Invertebrates, dating 

 back to the Cambrian, and pass in geologic and 

 palseontologic sequence through a series of five 

 halls surrounding the south-east court, to be de- 

 voted to the Age of Fishes ; the Age of Amphibi- 

 ans, of Permian and Triassic Reptiles ; the Age 

 of Jurassic Reptiles, including the giant Sauro- 

 poda ; to the Cretaceous Reptiles ; into the Age 

 of Mammals ; and finally into the Hall of the Age 

 of Man. This will afford effective exhibition of 

 the collections in vertebrate palaeontology which 



arranged in ascending order from an introductory 

 genealogical tree of the Primates to the races 

 which overran Europe in Neolithic times. On the 

 floor space surrounding these central cases are 

 shown some of the chief types of mammals of the 

 four continents, Africa, Eurasia, North and South 

 America, which was also the great theatre of 

 human evolution during late Pliocene and Pleisto- 

 cene times. 



Around the walls, above the cases, is a series 

 of four large mural paintings which present the 

 mammalian life of these continents during the 

 final period of maximum glaciation and the close 

 of the immediately preceding Third Glaciation 

 period. This is the reindeer and mammoth period 

 in Central Europe, of the late loess period of 

 northern France, of the loess deposition of the 



Fig. I. — The most common of the many extinct rhinoceroses is the Rhinoceros antigtiitatis or woolly rhinoceros of Europe and Siberia. This species 

 was most like the square-mouthed or white rhinoceros of Africa nearly extinct to-day. It was protected from the wintry blasts by a heavy coat of 

 long hair and a thick undercoat of fine wool. This brown wool was tound in a good state of preservation on the side of the face oi one specimen 

 discovered in the ice-fields of Siberia, and is now in the Museum of Petrograd. In the distance can be seen a group of mammoths and a line of 

 saigas — an extinct specie* of antelope. The rhinoceros kept closely to the ice-sheet and never wandered so far south as did the mammoth. It 

 was a plains-dweller, living on grass and small herbs. 



began in 1891 and extend from the first appear- 

 ance of vertebrate life to the very close of the 

 Pleistocene of North America. These collections 

 now include about 25,000 catalogued speci- 

 mens, chiefly from North and South America, 

 but there are also specimens from Eurasia, Africa, 

 and Australia, obtained either by museum expedi- 

 tions or by exchange. 



The Hall of the Age of Man is of especial in- 

 terest because it affords the first opportunity of 

 working out in palaeontology the general theory 

 of exhibition which prevails throughout the 

 American Museum — namely, to present animals, 

 extinct as well as living, in their environment. In 

 this hall what is actually known of the history of 

 man is presented in a series of ten central cases 



* The present article was prepared at the request of the Editor as an 

 abstract from an article with the same title which appeared in the popular 

 journal of the American Museum, Natural History, vol. xx., May-Jun«, 

 1930, No. 3. 



NO. 2686, VOL. 107] 



Pampean region of South America, and of the loess 

 deposition on the Missouri River in the latitude 

 of Kansas, where the native American horse 

 appeared for the last time on the American con- 

 tinent. These murals represent the four seasons 

 of the year in mid-Glacial time. Thus the woolly 

 rhinoceros, the saiga antelope, and the woolly 

 mammoth are shown (Fig. i) in a midwinter 

 steppe scene of northern France. The succeeding 

 mural (Fig. 2) represents early spring, herds of 

 mammoth and of reindeer migrating northward. 

 This is the most authentic of the murals, because 

 it is based upon the painting, drawing, and sculp- 

 ture of the contemporary Cro-Magnon race 

 (Fig. 4), Midsummer is depicted on the Mis- 

 souri River in the latitude of Kansas (Fig, 3) ; 

 the least-known animal in this stage is Bison 

 regius, which is represented in the American 

 Museum by a gigantic head and horns, the only 



