Quotes & Sayings About Natural History Museums

The evidence of cheetah genetic monotony would only grow. Bob Wayne, a talented postdoctoral fellow in our lab, examined cranial measurements and the bilateral symmetry of cheetah skulls. Although no one is certain why, in most livestock, asymmetry in skeletal characteristics (the difference between right and left measures of a trait) increases with inbreeding. Bob measured sixteen bilateral traits in thirty-three cheetah skulls held in natural history museums in Washington, Chicago, and New York. The study was not perfect because several of the skulls were incomplete due to a bullet hole in the skull. Nonetheless, in nearly every case, cheetah skulls were more asymmetric compared to the skulls of leopards, ocelots, or margays. When I explained these skull results in a television interview, the correspondent asked, "Dr. O'Brien, are you telling me that these cheetahs are lopsided?" Not exactly, but the cheetahs certainly looked very inbred. — Stephen J. O'Brien

If humans one day become extinct from a catastrophic collision, there would be no greater tragedy in the history of life in the universe. Not because we lacked the brain power to protect ourselves but because we lacked the foresight. The dominant species that replaces us in post-apocalyptic Earth just might wonder, as they gaze upon our mounted skeletons in their natural history museums, why large-headed Homo sapiens fared no better than the proverbially pea-brained dinosaurs. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

If the world were to end tomorrow and we could choose to save only one thing as the explanation and memorial to who we were, then we couldn't do better than the Natural History Museum, although it wouldn't contain a single human. The systematic Linnean order, the vast inquisitiveness and range of collated knowledge and beauty would tell all that is the best of us. — A.A. Gill

Museums have no political power, but they do have the possibility of influencing the political process. This is a complete change from their role in the early days of collecting and hoarding the world to one of using the collections as an archive for a changing world. This role is not merely scientifically important, but it is also a cultural necessity. — Richard Fortey

I wonder if we are seeing a return to the object in the science-based museum. Since any visitor can go to a film like Jurassic Park and see dinosaurs reawakened more graphically than any museum could emulate, maybe a museum should be the place to have an encounter with the bony truth. Maybe some children have overdosed on simulations on their computers at home and just want to see something solid
a fact of life. — Richard Fortey

Rumour has it that the gardens of natural history museums are used for surreptitious burial of those intermediate forms between species which might disturb the orderly classifications of the taxonomist. — David Lack

Go to the source for ideas, go to the Metropolitan Museum, find your inspiration in nature, go to the Museum of Natural History, but never rely on something that someone else has done. — Van Day Truex