All posts tagged with illustrations

Until the end of the 18th century, it was generally believed that species could not become extinct, and despite important scientific advances in the 16th and 17th centuries, it was widely held that since the dawn of life, no new animal or plant species had been created or lost.Furthermore, until the 19th century, the word “fossil” referred to any object that had been dug up from the ground, including not only what we recognize today as organic remains, but also gemstones, minerals, and other inorganic materials.

Until the late 18th century, the study of mollusks was based largely on shells. Very little research or published information existed about molluscan anatomy and soft tissues. Giuseppe Saverio Poli, recognized by many as the father of malacology, changed this with his monumental publication, Testacea utriusque Siciliae eorumque historia et anatome (1791-1827). Poli, born in 1746 in Molfetta, Italy, studied classics, theology, and natural sciences at the University of Padua.

Field books are important primary source materials for biodiversity research. Their pages are the first to document the thoughts, observations, musings, and raw data generated or gathered by a scientist while in the field. They are the foundation upon which published natural history literature is based. The Field Book Project (FBP) is working to improve access to field books in the Smithsonian’s collections. Digitized versions of these field books are made available in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). There are currently over 500 field books from FBP in BHL. One of these field books was written by Joshua F. B (Fry Bullitt) Camblos (1916-2012).

The National Museum of Natural History is hosting its inaugural celebration of International Polychaete Day (July 1, 2015) in the memory of Krisitan Fauchald, a research zoologist at the Smithsonian Institution who dedicated his life to studying and sharing annelid, or segmented, worms with the world. A majority of polychaetes are marine worms, and include common names like bristleworms, lugworms, featherduster worms, and sea mice. However, more familiar types of worms such as earthworms and leeches are also considered polychaetes.

Since the release of Science Gossip a little less than a month ago, 3,600 volunteers have enthusiastically completed 160,000 classifications of natural history illustrations from the pages of 19th century science periodicals!

Zooniverse unveils its latest project called Science Gossip which is an investigation into the making and communication of science in both the Victorian period and today. This project is born from a collaboration between an Arts and Humanities Research Council project in the UK, called ‘Constructing Scientific Communities: Citizen Science in the 19th and 21st Centuries’ (ConSciCom) and the Missouri Botanical Garden who provided content from the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). The publication of books and periodicals are key locations for knowledge about the natural world.

The artwork of Puerto Rican-American Louis Agassiz Fuertes has been featured a few times before on the BHL blog. His paintings are beautiful and eye-catching, and always a treat to visit. Through titles available in BHL, we can even see the evolution of Fuertes’s career— from his earliest professional work to his last. The Ithaca-born ornithologist and artist often drew as a young child, sketching domestic animals and wild birds alike.