Category Archives: Collections

Circulation of algae in exsiccatae: James Lloyd’s collections

By Louise Couëffé, University of Angers

James Lloyd was an amateur botanist author of local floras in western France. He gathered an important herbarium from 1838 to 1895 and was in correspondence with several important botanists of this period, such as François Crépin (1830–1903).

James Lloyd, 1865. Gadeceau, “Notice sur les travaux et la vie de James Lloyd » in Annales de la Société académique de Nantes et du département de la Loire-Inférieure, vol. 7 sér.7, Nantes, Mellinet, 1896, p. 205.

James Lloyd was born in England in 1811. When he was six years old, he left England to live in France, in Thouaré near Nantes, where James’s mother, Elisa Lake, married M. Ranson. Very interested in music and horticulture, he begun to study botany on his own in Nantes in 1835, using De Candolle’s flora.

In 1844, on the basis of his herbaria and the plants sent by many amateurs of botany, he published a local flora (Flore de la Loire-Inférieure). In 1854, this flora was extended to western France with the Flore de l’Ouest de la France.

James Lloyd was very interested in algae. His library contained several books on algae, published by European specialists between 1818 and 1850. He probably collected his first algae with his stepfather, M. Ranson. He collected algae for exsiccatae.

Exsiccatae were part of the process of the commodification of sciences. They enabled botanists to gather plants from all over the world without travelling and to access types confirmed by specialists without going to national museums. Exsiccatae were a specific type of collection created at the end of the 18th century to increase the circulation of types of botanical specimens.

The exsiccata is a specific genre of scientific output between the herbaria and the book. It would be edited by a botanist who produced several identical herbaria, containing the same set of species. They were considered scientific references because plants’ names were confirmed by well-known botanists or because they contained descriptions and types of new species. Unlike books or scientific illustrations, exsiccatae contained real plants, presenting both the characteristics of the species and the idiosyncratic particularities of the specimen. They enabled more precise observations and comparisons. Below each plant, a printed label indicated the title of the collection and its author’s name, the name of the species, it’s author, and sometimes the place and date of collecting.


Muséum de sciences naturelles d’Angers. Fonds James Lloyd – Algues de l’Ouest de la France, n°209 – Gloiosiphonia capillaris Glam

James Lloyd contributed to the exsiccata Algues marines du Finistère edited in 1852 by two brothers, Pierre-Louis (1798–1871) and Hippolyte-Marie (1802–1871) Crouan, pharmacists from Brest. This exsiccata was published in 50 exemplars and contained 404 species of algae. Some of its content was collected by James Lloyd, who was at the same time making his own exsiccata, Algues de l’Ouest de la France, began in 1847.

This collection was composed of twenty-four volumes of herbaria and made on subscription: buyers had to pay before receiving it, partly to finance James Lloyd travels to gather algae. He collected 83 percent of the specimens published in this collection. Fourteen collectors took part in the project. Some of them were specialists of algae, such as Gustave Thuret and Edouard Bornet; others were amateurs or Lloyd’s friends.

Specimens were carefully collected: they had to be similar, collected at the same phase of development (flowers, fruits, etc.), with visible organs. To make the various exemplars of the exsiccatae, collectors had to pick up many specimens of the same species (sometimes 50, sometimes several hundreds). This was a problem for rare species: some of them were collected in different places in order to get enough specimens without damaging or threatening the presence of the species in the localities. It was the case for the Nytophyllim punctatum var. ocellatum collected in Belle-Ile and le Croisic, even if the number of specimens from le Croisic were finally sufficient.

This exsiccata was published in few exemplars, from 1847 to 1894. Some of them were bought by local amateurs (Bourgault-Ducoudray, Mme Mosneron du Pin, etc.); others were acquired by well-known botanists, such as Gustave Thuret. One teacher of botany at the University of Uppsala, Johan Erhard Areschoug (1811–1887), asked James Lloyd to send him an exemplar of the exsiccata, but no exemplar is conserved in Uppsala now. Nowadays, some of them are conserved at Harvard, Oxford, Paris, Autun, Nancy, and Montpellier. Those collections increased the circulation of specimens collected by amateurs.

Bibliography

DAYRAT B., Les botanistes et la flore de France, trois siècles de découvertes, Paris, Publications scientifiques du Muséum, 2003, pp. 407–416.

DIXON P.S., “Notes on important algal herbaria”, British Phycological Bulletin, 3(2), 1967, pp. 213–218.

LAMY D., « Le savoir botanique par les herbiers », Colloque « Voyages en botanique », 16 et 17 juin 2005, Besançon, en ligne sur www.livre-franchecomte.org, pp. 1–13.

LAMY D., « Les herbiers de plantes cryptogames : méthodes, emplois, perspectives » in PIERREL R. et J.-P. REDURON (ed), Les herbiers : un outil d’avenir. Tradition et modernité, Actes du colloque de Lyon, 20–22 novembre 2002, Villers-lès-Nancy, 2004, pp. 30–39.

ROUILLARD T., BAZAN S., et COUEFFE L., « L’exsiccata des Algues de l’Ouest de la France du botaniste nantais James Lloyd », Bulletin de la Société d’éetudes scientifiques de l’Anjou, 2019, pp. 153–181.

STAFLEU F. A. and R. S. COWAN, 1976-1988 Taxonomic literature: A selective guide to botanical publications and collections with dates, commentaries and types, vol. III Lh-O, Utrecht, Bohn, Scheltema & Holkema, 1981, pp. 127–128.

STAFLEU F. A. and R. S. COWAN, 1976-1988 Taxonomic literature: A selective guide to botanical publications and collections with dates, commentaries and types, vol. I A-G, Utrecht, Bohn, Scheltema & Holkema,1976, pp. 569–570.

Minerales, el vértigo de clasificar

Por Irina Podgorny, CONICET/Archivo Histórico del Museo de La Plata, Argentina

Por lo menos esa es una de las historias posibles que, hasta el 22 de agosto de este año, cuenta Piedras preciosas, una exposición situada en la planta baja de la Gran Galería de la Evolución del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural de París. Organizada con Van Cleef & Arpels, la casa de joyas establecida en la Place Vendôme a fines del siglo XIX, se aprovecha de la riqueza de la colección de la Galería de Mineralogía y Geología del museo: unos 130.500 objetos, entre ellos 4.500 gemas que llegaron por los medios y de los lugares más diversos, es decir las expediciones, la compra, la confiscación, las donaciones y las campañas de investigación. La muestra recorre las aristas de esa relación, centrándose en las artes y las ciencias utilizadas en los talleres de los joyeros parisinos, en las explicaciones científicas acerca de la formación de los minerales y en el conocimiento y la creatividad de los artesanos y mercaderes de la capital francesa. Un recorrido donde sobresalen la dimensión temporal, las contingencias geomorfológicas y la complejidad química existente detrás de cada piedra pero también la productividad de la alianza de las industrias del lujo y lo superfluo con el conocimiento y el comercio tal como se expresa en las piezas allí exhibidas.

En una sala lateral, la colección de gemas del abad René Just Haüy (1743-1822) quien propondría un modelo para explicar la génesis de los cristales tomando la forma geométrica y el carácter esencial para determinar las especies minerales. Haüy aplicará entonces su sistema al estudio de la gemología, es decir a las piedras preciosas. El prestigio de este sistema, no olvidemos, llegaría al Río de la Plata también en forma de colección: el ministro Bernardino Rivadavia, uno de los principales promotores del museo público, compraría 720 minerales clasificados según este sistema cristalográfico para que que, integrados a la enseñanza, vincularan las muestras del país al orden geométrico de los cristales, una puerta de entrada a la inversión minera y al comercio.

Las piedras ríoplatenses, por su parte, viajarían a París en el equipaje y en los encargos del académico Roger Caillois (1913-1978), ahora protagonistas de la sección de Piedras preciosas dedicada al arte y al surrealismo de André Breton. Caillois, a diferencia de los grandes admiradores de la geometría, prefirió situar sus piedras en el universo de los juegos de la naturaleza, tan propio del Barroco, donde se pensaba que esta, sin intervención humana, dibujaba y grababa en las rocas paisajes y formas hipnotizantes. Diez años después de su muerte, su colección de 2.000 minerales sería donada al Muséum donde se exhibe de manera permanente en el vestíbulo de la Galería de Mineralogía. A 20 metros la una de la otra, Piedras preciosas ofrece un recorrido idéntico, donde el público se detiene a suspirar deslumbrado por la infinita poesía de las formas. Enfrente, en cambio, el “Retrato cubista”, “El castillo”, el “Ágata plumífera”, los cuarzos del Uruguay y los cristales del Brasil así bautizados por Caillois, se mueren de aburrimiento. O quizás se rían. A fin de cuentas, saben que la Tierra es un laboratorio geoquímico que nadie, jamás, podrá predecir y que, algún día, nos usará para componer quién sabe qué maravilla.

Puede leer el texto completo aquí

Collecting for Seed Testing

By Anaïs Got, University of Angers

In agriculture it all starts with a seed. In 1869 the German agronomist Friedrich Nobbe founded and theorised a new agronomic speciality called “Seed Testing”. From the end of the 19th century, it spread as a set of practices and knowledge built and mobilised by scientists, also called agro-botanists, who identified seeds as fundamental elements on which States should intervene in order to improve national agriculture. To this end, they developed a set of methods and techniques essentially based on the scientific examination of characteristics and faculties of seeds. From then on, seed agro-botanists asserted themselves both as agronomists, i.e. with a resolutely agricultural perspective and purpose, and also traditionally as botanists of a botany intended to be applied to the seeds of cultivated species as plant reproductive organs.

Seed testing stations had their own seed collections, as here in the French station around 1910 (Archives of the French National Seed Testing Station, 2 ARCH 390, glass plate, 18×13cm, by. 1910)

Agro-botanists operated in laboratories called seed testing stations where they undertook to answer technically and scientifically all the questions that agricultural and industrial seed application raised. To this end, they carried out both technical analyses and examinations of seed samples sent to them by the seed industry, as well as a variety of scientific research on seeds.

From the beginning, the practice of collection has therefore been fundamental and recurrent in Seed Testing. If analytical activities generated punctual collections of samples, they also made it possible to collect a variety of agricultural seeds preserved by the seed testing stations in order to be used as a guide and reference for subsequent manipulations. The experimental work also allowed seed collections to be made. Finally, from a transnational perspective, it appears that the agro-botanists of different seed testing stations, who have been very connected to each other since the end of the 19th century, frequently exchanged seeds in order to participate in comparative campaigns or to feed their respective collections.

Inventories kept track of seed samples kept in seed testing stations. This extract lists the varieties of wheat and their origins (Archives of the French National Seed Testing Station, 1 ARCH 18, manuscript notebook, 1902-1907)

In short, Seed Testing Stations started to collect seeds as the basic material, in turn support and referent, of their scientific and technical activities. In addition, collecting was at the heart of scientific process aimed at identifying and referencing the normal and the abnormal in order to understand and rationalise knowledge. Thus, new samples were listed, identified, analysed and then preserved in a scientific approach. During the 20the century, photography renewed traditional seed collection practices for obvious practical reasons: collections of Seed Testing Stations became then more iconographic.

Le tatou de la collection Maulny au Musée vert

N° MHNLM 2003,28,200

par Nathalie Richard, L’Université du Mans, et Nicolas Morel, Musées du Mans

De son nom scientifique Tolypeutes matacus, le tatou à trois bandes habite le centre de l’Amérique du Sud. Généralement, ce petit mammifère vit seul dans des habitats secs. Sa carapace formée de plaques le protège des prédateurs. Contrairement aux autres tatous, les tolypeutes ont la capacité de s’enrouler entièrement sur eux-mêmes en présence d’un danger. Cet animal nocturne est un insectivore mais son régime alimentaire peut varier en fonction des saisons. Son excellent odorat et ses griffes acérées lui permettent de collecter sa nourriture. Malheureusement, cette espèce est considérée comme menacée par l’Union internationale pour la conservation de la nature du fait de la destruction de son habitat et de la chasse. Sa reproduction est également lente avec un seul petit par portée.

Ce spécimen desséché est originaire du Brésil. Sur sa carapace, l’inscription « Tatou » est visible. Il provient du cabinet de curiosité Louis Maulny (1758-1815), collectionneur et naturaliste manceau qui l’a probablement acheté dans un commerce d’histoire naturelle.

Les collections de naturalias conservées au musée Vert sont issues de plus de 200 ans d’acquisitions depuis l’ouverture du premier musée au Mans en 1799. Fortes aujourd’hui de plus de 450.000 objets, elles correspondent à des ensembles très variés liés à la nature et à l’environnement : animaux naturalisés, insectes, coquillages, herbiers, fossiles, minéraux, roches… Des spécimens uniques issus de cabinets d’histoire naturelle du XVIIIe siècle, notamment deux autres tatous, font partie de ses collections les plus précieuses.

Ce tatou est un exemple parmi d’autres des spécimens qui ont voyagé jusqu’à des collections européennes et qui sont ensuite passés d’une collection à une autre. Un autre spécimen avec une histoire comparable, un tatou à neuf bandes, est conservé au Musée des sciences naturelles de Barcelone et faisait partie du Cabinet Salvador.

The armadillo from the Maulny collection at the Musée vert

N° MHNLM 2003,28,200

by Nathalie Richard and Nicolas Morel

From its scientific name Tolypeutes matacus, the three-banded armadillo lives in central South America. Generally, this small mammal lives alone in dry habitats. Its carapace formed of plates protects it from predators. Unlike other armadillos, tolypeutes have the ability to curl up entirely on themselves in the presence of danger. This nocturnal animal is an insectivore but its diet can vary according to the seasons. Its excellent sense of smell and its sharp claws allow it to collect its food. Unfortunately, this species is considered threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature because of the destruction of its habitat and hunting. Its reproduction is also slow with only one young per litter.

This dried specimen is native to Brazil. On its carapace, the inscription “Armadillo” is visible. It comes from the curiosity cabinet of Louis Maulny (1758–1815), a collector and naturalist from Le Mans who probably bought it in a natural history shop.

The collections of naturalias kept in the Musée Vert are the result of more than 200 years of acquisitions since the opening of the first museum in Le Mans in 1799. With more than 450,000 objects, they correspond to a wide variety of objects related to nature and the environment: naturalized animals, insects, shells, herbaria, fossils, minerals, rocks… Unique specimens from 18th-century natural history cabinets, including two other armadillos, are among its most valuable collections. This armadillo is just one example of specimens that travelled to European collections and then passed from one collection to another. Another specimen with a similar history, a nine-banded armadillo, is kept in the Museum of Natural Sciences in Barcelona and was part of the Salvador Cabinet.

Gabinet Salvador (video)

One of our researchers, Neus Ibáñez, talks about preventive conservation of the Salvador Cabinet in the Institut Botànic de Barcelona (Barcelona Botanical Institute, IBB) under the guidance of the Preventative Conservation Laboratory at the Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona (Natural Science Museum of Barcelona).

To learn more about the Salvador Cabinet, read our previous blog posts:

The Salvador collection in Barcelona

by José Pardo-Tomás, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científica

Salvador’s Cabinet of Curiosities

by Neus Ibáñez, Museu Ciencies Naturals Barcelona (Institut Botanic de Barcelona)

The Salvador collection in Barcelona

By José Pardo-Tomás, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científica, Spain

When we think about the Salvador collection some aspects stand out. The first one is that it’s a collection that has been in the hands of the same family since its foundation – in the first half of the 17th century – until it was acquired and converted into a scientific heritage of Barcelona’s city, already in the first decades of the twentieth century. In this long process, the collection went through different stages, through some transformations and resignifications, that accompanied the interests and aspirations of the heir responsible for it at the moment. In this sense, we can divide this history in three phases: the first, of formation and consolidation of the cabinet; the second, the reconfiguration of the cabinet as a museum in 19th century and, finally, the resurgence of the cabinet as a heritage asset in 21st century.

The accidental premature death of José Salvador (the last active member of the dynasty) in 1855 brought some time after to the closure of the museum at Barcelona. Around 1870, the cabinet and all its contents (furniture, library, naturalia and artificialia pieces) were moved to one of the many countryside properties of the family. Nothing was heard about the cabinet until 1923 when two curators of the Barcelona Museum of Natural Sciences established contact with the owners. But the negotiations for trying to recover the scientific collections for the public failed.

In 1938, in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, Republican Catalan Government issued a decree by which Salvador collection had to be incorporated into the public heritage and deposited in the Botanical Institute of Barcelona, which had been created four years earlier, as a dependence of the Barcelona Museum of Natural Sciences. At the end of 1945, the Barcelona City Council acquired the Salvador legacy and allowed for some dissemination of the existence of the collection, mainly of the herbarium, the most highly valued piece by the botanists of the Institute. But the constant funding problems during the Franco’s dictatorship and a large part of the democratic transition period, together with certain weaknesses in the institutional insertion of the Botanical Institute considerably delayed a proper cataloguing of the collection and a museum project to bring the collection to the public.

Until the end of the 20th century, only a few scholars had accessed the collection and documents of the Salvador family. Some effort to popularize the history of the cabinet and searching for funding and institutional support in order to return it to the public in a way that would ensure its proper conservation and use was made but with scarce success. Based on the new agreement between the CSIC (Spanish Scientific Research Council) and the Barcelona City Council, it was decided to erect a new building for the Botanical Institute, inaugurated in 2003. Here, finally Salvador Collection had to have its own space in the best conditions of conservation and, at the same time, open to viewing by the public. Finally, in the Spring of 2014 opened the exhibition Salvadoriana: the cabinet of curiosities of Barcelona, which remained open until May 2016 in the large room adjacent to the Salvador Room in the Botanical Institute, where the restored cabinet was exhibited and is still exhibited today.

Salvadoriana was born as a project which gave its first step cataloguing and restoring the pieces of the collection. In fact, all the pieces (more than 15,000 items) were restored using the most appropriate technical and scientific criteria: respect for the original, minimum intervention, compatibility of added materials, reversibility of the treatments and graphic documentation of the entire process. Hundreds of pieces were dry-cleaned and permanently wrapped, complete specimens were restored and the contents of the drawers of the original cabinets were cleaned and mounted. Furthermore, the polychrome doors of the original cabinets were restored, together with the material from the most recent find.

This long and often winding road to get here poses several challenges. There is still much work to be done in the museography for exhibit the collection to different public maybe in different spaces (both virtual or real). As well as there is still much work to be done in the field of the and scientific and historical research. The documents of the family archive, a large part of the correspondence, the evolution of the family’s business and its relation to scientific practices, the visitors to the cabinet before and after its conversion in Museo Salvador between 1830 and 1870, the connection of the Salvador cabinet of curiosities with the collections of the Barcelona Museum of Natural Sciences, etc. Above all, when thinking about the participation of different kinds of natural history collections in a “regional” or “provincial” city as Barcelona, putting together with other European case studies in a project such as SciCoMove.

Collections of the “Cesare Lombroso” Museum of Criminal Anthropology

By Cristina Cilli, University of Turin, Italy

Cesare Lombroso positivism was expressed as extreme attention to statistics, the accumulation of documentary evidences, and application of the scientific method to existing disciplines or those he helped establish, with special attention to deviance: psychiatry, criminal anthropology, sociology of the genius, the madman and the criminal, (presumed) paranormal phenomena.

The Main Room of the Museum

The Museum today houses important collections concerning the study of crime and criminals, of insanity and the insane. Lombroso collected a rich series of objects made in prison and in the insane asylum. In addition, he collected an extensive documentation of the physiognomy of criminals and the insane, inspired by a widespread European tradition.

The museum displays numerous human remains collected and studied by Lombroso and his students, including a rich collection of more than 700 skulls: murders skull “presents the maximum of criminal traits”, i.e. “narrow forehead, enormous frontal sinuses, orbits, mandible and zygomata, asymmetry of the face, of the nose, of the orbits…”. To finalize the theorem, the fossa identified on the skull of the “brigand Villella” was proof of the fact that cranial anomalies reflect cerebral anomalies and primitive biological traits. The collection of comparative anatomy tends to show the presence of the brigand Villella’s cranial anomaly in mammals evolutionarily distant from man.

Death masks: 30 wax death masks reproducing the faces of criminals who died in prison were given to Lombroso by Lorenzo Tenchini, professor of Anatomy at the University of Parma. The masks were made in the 1880s and 90s as a personal gallery of anatomical, physiognomic and anthropometric aspects typical of criminals. Other 30 death masks are in plaster.

Giuseppe Villella’s Skull Room and showcases with clothes made by insane person

Material evidence: for Lombroso the material evidence of crime consisted not only of “things” but also of “signs.” The material evidence tells something, or a lot, about the criminal man. Illuminating the crime scene, it demonstrates the modus operandi and motives of the criminal, also providing indications about the criminal’s full or partial liability to punishment. The Museum houses more then 350 material evidences like knifes, daggers, picklocks, blunt objects, ropes, etc…

Lombroso views tattoos as an indicator of criminality, which he would later closely relate to “atavism”: it would be this regression toward primitive biological forms that drives criminals to indelibly engrave designs, symbols and writings on their bodies. Tattoos collection is composed by drawings on paper (about 150), pieces of skins, photographs (about 100) represent one of the richest and most important collection of the second half of the 19th century.

Collection of artistic manufacturing made by insane people (outsider art or “art brut”). Lombroso was interested in the artistic expressions of mentally disabled persons: if the rather mad person preserves the appearance of genius, albeit deprived of substance, the lunatic will connect us to the substance, albeit formally inadequate substance, of genius: drawings on paper (more than 200), furniture, pipes, sculptures in wood, object in paper, clothes, etc.

The collection of more than 80 water pitchers, engraved with writing and drawings by prisoners in Turin’s “Le Nuove” Prison represents a unique collection of all the world as well as the clay sculptures. The model of the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia (USA) and 6 models of cells coming from several European prisons complete the collection concerning the places of imprisonment.

Finally the historical Archive of the Museum preserves a fund of over than 6000 photographs, about 1900 Lombroso’s professional and personal letters, documentations of his activities of research, more than 500 writings from insane people and prisoners. The majority of this documentation is digitalized.

Arroyo del Vizcaíno, Uruguay

Por Richard Fariña y Martín Batallés, Universidad de la Republica, Uruguay

El sitio paleontológico del Arroyo del Vizcaíno, cerca de la localidad de Sauce, Uruguay, cuenta una historia de mamíferos gigantes ya desaparecidos, con el particular agregado de posible evidencia de una muy antigua presencia humana.

Se trata de uno de los mayores yacimientos de mamíferos extintos de Uruguay, por la enorme cantidad de fósiles allí acumulados, su excepcional estado de preservación y la diversidad de especies encontradas.

El yacimiento tiene unos 30.000 años de antigüedad. Los fósiles pertenecen a animales de la llamada megafauna sudamericana, la fauna de enormes mamíferos que vivieron durante el período pleistoceno. En el sitio se han encontrado restos de perezosos gigantes, gliptodontes, tigres dientes de sable, mastodontes, toxodontes, caballos y ciervos prehistóricos.

El descubrimiento fue realizado en 1997 por vecinos del lugar y los primeros fósiles fueron colectados y conservados por alumnos y profesores del liceo local. Actualmente las excavaciones y la investigación son llevadas adelante por un equipo de paleontólogos de la Facultad de Ciencias de la Universidad de la República.

La colección y centro de investigación se encuentra en la localidad de Sauce y alberga más de 2.000 fósiles. Allí se realizan tareas de investigación, preparación y conservación, además de un proyecto de divulgación científica y patrimonial.

El descubrimiento fue realizado en 1997 por vecinos del lugar y los primeros fósiles fueron colectados y conservados por alumnos y profesores del liceo local.

Desde 2011 las excavaciones y la investigación son llevadas adelante por un equipo de paleontólogos de la Facultad de Ciencias de la Universidad de la República, La colección y centro de investigación se encuentra en la localidad de Sauce, departamento de Canelones, y alberga más de 2.000 piezas.

La cantidad de fósiles extraídos y los que quedan por colectar aseguran trabajo para muchos años y dan al sitio una importancia enorme, pero aún hay más: marcas en algunos fósiles sugieren a los humanos como responsables de su manufactura. Como si esto fuese poco, las dataciones indican una edad sorprendentemente alta, cercana a los 30.000 años. Esto sumaría al Arroyo del Vizcaíno a la reciente lista de sitios americanos con evidencias de poblamiento antiguo. Hallazgos como Monteverde (Chile) o Pedra Furada (Brasil) plantean la llegada del humano al continente miles de años antes de lo supuesto, abriendo una discusión a la que el Arroyo del Vizcaíno aporta nueva evidencia.

El proyecto tiene también una fuerte vocación por la divulgación y la popularización del conocimiento. Paralelamente a las excavaciones se viene realizando un extenso trabajo de relación con la comunidad, docencia, y divulgación que a través de charlas y talleres en escuelas y liceos, publicación de libros, comunicación a través de redes sociales y sitios web, jornadas abiertas en el sitio y en la colección, y participación en eventos como el Día del Patrimonio y Museos en la Noche. También la creación de proyectos educativos de alcance nacional e internacional como Megafauna 3D.

Sta. Isabel esquina Francisca Pascual de Artigas. (Predio del Liceo Sauce 2), Sauce, Canelones, Uruguay.
Para coordinar visitas grupales o individuales escribinos a arroyodelvizcaino@fcien.edu.uy

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Arroyo del Vizcaíno, Uruguay

By Richard Fariña and Martín Batallés, Universidad de la Republica, Uruguay

The Arroyo del Vizcaíno palaeontological site, near the town of Sauce, Uruguay, tells a story of giant mammals now disappeared, with the particular addition of possible evidence of a very ancient human presence.

It is possibly the largest deposits of extinct mammals in Uruguay, due to the enormous number of fossils accumulated there, its exceptional state of preservation and the diversity of species found. The site is about 30,000 years old and contains fossils belonging to animals of the impressive South American megafauna, the huge mammals that lived during the Pleistocene. Remains of giant sloths, glyptodons, sabre-toothed tigers, mastodons, toxodons, prehistoric horses and deer have been found at the site.

Discovered in 1997 by local residents, its first fossils were collected and preserved by students and teachers at the local high school. Since 2011 the excavations and research have been carried out by a team of palaeontologists from the Facultad de Ciencias of the Universidad de la República. The over 2,000-specimen collection is located at a research centre in the town of Sauce. Research, preparation and conservation tasks are carried out there, as well as a scientific and heritage outreach  project.

The fossils extracted and those that remain to be collected ensure work for many years and give the site enormous importance, but there is still more: marks on some fossils suggest that humans are responsible for their manufacture. As if this were not enough, the dates indicate a surprisingly high age, over 30,000 years. This would add the Arroyo del Vizcaíno to the recent list of American sites with evidence of ancient human presence. Findings such as Monte Verde (Chile) or Pedra Furada (Brazil) suggest the arrival of humans to the continent thousands of years before it was supposed, opening a discussion to which the Arroyo del Vizcaíno provides new evidence.

The project also has a strong vocation for  outreach and science popularisation. In parallel to the excavations, extensive work has been carried out in relation to the community, with talks and workshops in schools and high schools, publication of books, communication through social networks and websites, open days on the site and in the collection, as well as participation in events such as Heritage Day and Museums at Night and the creation of educational projects of national and international scope such as Megafauna 3D.

Santa Isabel St and Francisca Pascual de Artigas (premises of the Liceo Sauce 2), Sauce, Canelones, Uruguay.
To visit, email us at arroyodelvizcaino@fcien.edu.uy

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