Solnhofener Plattenkalk: a heritage stone of international significance from Germany

2019 ◽  
Vol 486 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Kölbl-Ebert ◽  
B. J. Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Upper Jurassic ◽  
High Price ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
Early Bird ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Floor Tiles ◽  
The World ◽  
Jurassic Limestone ◽  
Solnhofen Limestone

AbstractIn Bavaria (Germany), between Solnhofen and Kelheim, numerous quarries allow utilization of a thinly plated Upper Jurassic limestone known in German as the Solnhofener Plattenkalk and in English as Solnhofen Limestone. Here limestone slabs have been quarried for centuries and it is not necessary to cut the limestone with a saw as it can be split conveniently into thin and even slabs or sheets which are used for floor tiles and wall cladding. Thick slabs of especially fine quality have been used for lithography. This later utilization began in the late eighteenth century with lithographic Solnhofen Limestone soon being marketed worldwide. The industry continues on a smaller scale today. Slabs are quarried by hand so as not to break them, accounting for their high price. Because of this ‘gentle’ quarrying method, fossils have also been found. Although rare, over time many Solnhofen fossil specimens have found their way into natural history museums throughout the world. Most noteworthy is the early bird Archaeopteryx. Given its utilitarian usage worldwide as a lithographic stone, and its sale for centuries as floor tiles, coupled with its being a source of unique fossils, Solnhofener Plattenkalk is recommended here as a Global Heritage Stone Resource.

scholarly journals NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS

2021 ◽  
pp. 24-28
Author(s):  
Dimítri De Araújo Costa ◽  
Nuno Gomes ◽  
Harold Cantallo ◽  
Carlos Antunes
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Scientific Culture ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
Type Specimens ◽  
Local Fauna ◽  
History Museums ◽  
The World ◽  
Object Of Study

Society in general is distant from scientific culture, it is required to bring scientific knowledge closer to the population. In this context, an effective and attractive way for scientific dissemination is the establishment of natural history museums, which are institutions of knowledge, displaying the past. Natural history museums have the natural world as their object of study; and their collections may contain the most diverse types of materials (local and/or from various parts of the world), such as zoological, botanical, geological, archaeological, among others. Scientific collections are the largest and most important source of authoritative biodiversity data, contributing to studies of biodiversity composition, evolutionary (morphological and genetic), biogeographical, phenological, as well as geological. The materials present in these collections may serve for temporal comparison, being useful to produce predictive models. Likewise, they have a fundamental role in safeguarding type specimens, i.e. the first organisms identified to describe and name a new species. In addition, there is the component available to visitors in general, in order to raise public awareness on the preservation of the local fauna and flora and of other places in the world. In this way, the museums serve both the academic-scientific public and visitors who come to these sites for recreational purposes. It is intended to promote, in Vila Nova de Cerveira, the Natural History Museum of the Iberian Peninsula - NatMIP (“Museu de História Natural da Península Ibérica”), which intends to collect materials for scientific purposes, mainly Iberian.

Goods at Pawn

2007 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-238
Author(s):  
Anne E. C. McCants
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Consumer Behavior ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Consumer Goods ◽  
High Price ◽  
Critical Component ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Consumer Loans ◽  
The World ◽  
Widespread Access

The pawnshop was a critical component of urban credit networks in early modern Europe, serving as a source of ready cash in an era before there was widespread access to deposit banking and formal consumer loans. This article examines the use of the pawnshop, among other financial strategies, such as shop credit and loans between kin and neighbors, by a sample of poor to middling citizen households in eighteenth-century Amsterdam. It also evaluates the multiple links between consumer behavior and the acquisition of either savings or debt. Petty credit from the pawnshop came at a high price, and its use presumed prior access to consumer goods suitable for pawning. Thus we find that the poorest households did not rely on the pawnshop as often or as extensively as their better-situated peers for whom collateral was more easily obtained. Better-situated households also enjoyed easier access to shop credit, the terms of which were more favorable for the consumer. None of these households, however, were in positions to save to the extent necessary for participation in the larger capital markets of Amsterdam and the world.

Type collections of plants and fungi in Ukraine: realities and prospects

2021 ◽  
pp. 358-370
Author(s):  
Natalia Shiyan
Keyword(s):  
Natural History Museums ◽  
Type Specimens ◽  
Important Condition ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Biodiversity ◽  
Preservation Conditions ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Biological Organisms

For the stability of the nomenclature of biological organisms an important condition is the presence and preservation of type specimens of the described taxa. The type specimens of plants and fungi typically are accumulated and stored in herbaria of specialized scientific institutions (e.g. botanical gardens and universities) or natural history museums. In Ukraine, there are nearly 80 herbaria of various volumes of collections but only 22 of them have type materials of taxa of different ranks, which were described from the territory of Ukraine and the world. The article includes a quantitative assessment of type materials of Ukrainian herbaria and emphasizes their role in regional and global biodiversity surveys. On the basis of own research of the Ukrainian herbarium fund, the estimation of preservation conditions of type specimens of plants and fungi and their collections in Ukraine is given, and the prospects of functioning of these collections are considered.

Basics of the external communication of State Natural History Museum NAS of Ukraine

2018 ◽  
pp. 3-8
Author(s):  
Arkhipova Kh. ◽  
Danylyuk K.
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Communication Strategies ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
History Museum ◽  
External Communication ◽  
History Museums ◽  
The World

The main tendencies of development of communication strategies of the leading natural history museums of the world are considered. Based on the Strategy for the Development of State Natural History Museum NAS of Ukraine, the main goals, tasks and channels of communication with the main segments of the audience of the museum are developed.

Museums of natural history—do we need their collections in the time of molecular biology?

1993 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 319-328
Author(s):  
Sven Mathiasson
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Molecular Biology ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
Museum Visitors ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Natural History Collections ◽  
The World

All over the world natural history museums act as storehouses. Billions of creatures are preserved. Most museum visitors never see these collections; they only meet the limited specimens presented in public exhibitions. Most people seem to know little about the value of these collections and how they are used. This article presents some aspects of natural history collections and their value in scientific and other contexts.

scholarly journals Taxonomic triage and the poverty of phylogeny

2004 ◽  
Vol 359 (1444) ◽  
pp. 571-583 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quentin D. Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Information Age ◽  
Biological Research ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
Biodiversity Crisis ◽  
Intellectual Content ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The World

Revisionary taxonomy is frequently dismissed as merely descriptive, which belies its strong intellectual content and hypothesis–driven nature. Funding for taxonomy is inadequate and largely diverted to studies of phylogeny that neither improve classifications nor nomenclature. Phylogenetic classifications are optimal for storing and predicting information, but phylogeny divorced from taxonomy is ephemeral and erodes the accuracy and information content of the language of biology. Taxonomic revisions and monographs are efficient, high–throughput species hypothesis–testing devices that are ideal for the World Wide Web. Taxonomic knowledge remains essential to credible biological research and is made urgent by the biodiversity crisis. Theoretical and technological advances and threats of mass species extinctions indicate that this is the time for a renaissance in taxonomy. Clarity of vision and courage of purpose are needed from individual taxonomists and natural history museums to bring about this evolution of taxonomy into the information age.

Foole’s Gold

Pyrite ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Rickard
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
Time Limits ◽  
History Museums ◽  
The World ◽  
Academic Courses ◽  
The Subject

This classic opening gambit at the stereotypical drinks party always throws me. I have been a professor at a university for most of my life, so the easiest answer is that I teach. This is true, but it disguises the reality that much of my waking time has been concerned with research. If I admit this, then it becomes necessary to explain what I actually research. One of my pet subjects is pyrite. But if I let on that I research pyrite, my interlocutors look at me as though I am one of those wonderful beings who haunt the bowels of natural history museums as world experts on a rare species of toad. As with toads, most people in the world have heard of pyrite. They know it is a mineral or stone, and most know that it is also called fool’s gold, a familiar theme of moral tales and nursery stories. So the idea of someone studying pyrite is not altogether the stuff of IgNobel prizes. Within the time limits imposed by decent conversation I cannot explain that pyrite is the mineral that made the modern world. I cannot refer them to a book about it since there has not been one published about pyrite since 1725. This book is an attempt to rectify the situation. In it I contend that pyrite has had a disproportionate and hitherto unrecognized influence on developing the world as we know it today. This influence extends from human evolution and culture, through science and industry, to ancient, modern, and future Earth environments and the origins and evolution of early life on the planet. The book is aimed at making the subject accessible to the general reader. It is not a scientific monograph, since these handle only the science and are really directed at the converted: the high priests of the cathedral of science and technology and their aspirant novices. It is also not aimed at being a textbook in the conventional sense: textbooks are generally aimed at specific academic courses and ultimately pave the way for the students to understand the monographs.

The meaning of ceraunia: archaeology, natural history and the interpretation of prehistoric stone artefacts in the eighteenth century

2002 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTHEW R. GOODRUM
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
History Museums ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of

Historians of archaeology have noted that prehistoric stone artefacts were first identified as such during the seventeenth century, and a great deal has been written about the formulation of the idea of a Stone Age in the nineteenth century. Much less attention has been devoted to the study of prehistoric artefacts during the eighteenth century. Yet it was during this time that researchers first began systematically to collect, classify and interpret the cultural and historical meaning of these objects as archaeological specimens rather than geological specimens. These investigations were conducted within the broader context of eighteenth-century antiquarianism and natural history. As a result, they offer an opportunity to trace the interrelationships that existed between the natural sciences and the science of prehistoric archaeology, which demonstrates that geological theories of the history of the earth, ethnographic observations of ‘savage peoples’ and natural history museums all played important roles in the interpretation of prehistoric stone implements during the eighteenth century.

An opalized oak from Clover Creek, Lincoln County, Idaho c.1895

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-368
Author(s):  
Mike Viney ◽  
Dagmar Dietrich ◽  
Jim Mills
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Common Interest ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
Taxonomic Affinity ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Lincoln County ◽  
The World

Abstract According to mineralogical literature, some of the finest opalized wood in the world was discovered in Idaho c.1895, originating in a unique deposit along Clover Creek in Lincoln County (now Gooding County). The American mineral dealer Dr A. E. Foote acquired and processed the bulk of the discovery into specimens that were advertised between 1896 and 1904. Over a period of four years, we have identified sixteen natural history museums in Europe, North America, and Australia in possession of Clover Creek opalized oak today. Many museum acquisitions and the fossil’s taxonomic affinity, Quercinium pliocaenicum, resulted from collective networking between mineral dealers, private collectors and scientists – evidence of a common interest among a diversity of people – contributing the best specimens for museums of natural history.

scholarly journals ‘Visual Histories’ Science Visualization in Nineteenth-Century Natural History Museums

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 404-421
Author(s):  
Stefanie Jovanovic-Kruspel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Visual Memory ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
History Museum ◽  
History Museums ◽  
The World ◽  
Shed Light

This article attempts to shed light on the complex interdependencies between science, art and popular visual culture in the context of nineteenth-century natural history museums. Natural history museums are still underestimated agents for (artistic) scientific visualizations. Built as ‘visual narrators’ they became a form of mass media that conveyed scientific knowledge to diverse audiences. This article is a first attempt to bring order into the broad field of science visualization and to describe its significance for the popularization of the natural sciences. The visual outreach of museums such as the Natural History Museum Vienna went far beyond their circle of visitors. By creating and presenting first rank artistic imaginaries, they inspired highly circulated teaching devices such as school wall charts, textbooks or models, thus influencing our collective visual memory. These images subconsciously shaped the way we perceive the world as it is and as it could have been. 

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