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Welcome
Founded
in 1869, the AMNH mammal collections are among the oldest at the
museum. Today, the Department houses over 275,000 specimens, making
it the third largest collection of Recent mammals in the world.
Taxonomic coverage is particularly broad (100% of the 26 mammalian
orders; 96% of the 136 families; about 50% of the 1135 genera and
about 60% of the 4629 species), and the collection contains over
1200 name-bearing type specimens. The collections of marsupials,
insectivores, bats, primates, rodents, carnivores, whales and ungulates
are recognized as being among the best in the world. The
scope of the collections is worldwide, with areas of particular
strength including Australia and New Guinea (30,000 specimens),
Central Asia (12,000 specimens), Central Africa (30,000 specimens),
and South America (50,000 specimens). Today, the Department draws
on these collections to support active research programs on mammalian
diversity and evolution in groups such as bats, marsupials and rodents
from a wide range of countries including the Central African Republic,
French Guiana, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Peru and Vietnam. The
collections are visited by an average of 130 researchers every year,
and the Department loans over 500 specimens a year to researchers
in the USA and overseas. The scientific mission of the Department of Mammalogy is to describe the diversity of living and recently extinct mammals and to explore the mechanisms responsible for their evolution and extinction. In fulfillment of this objective, the Department collects, archives and studies specimens of Recent mammals and the data associated with those specimens. We aim always to provide the highest standards of curatorial care and to promote access to the collections by other scholars. The Recent Mammals Collection, together with the remarkable collection of books, journals and manuscripts of the AMNH Research Library provide scholars with outstanding resources for research in mammalian systematics, biodiversity and evolutionary biology. Details about the Bluntschli Histological Collection can be found here. |
