SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, & MATHEMATICS Shark Jaws & Narwhal Tusks: the oldest natural history museum in Ireland Honouring former Trinity student, Andrew Bacon, and his contribution to the Zoological Museum The oldest natural history museum in Ireland is the Trinity Zoological Museum, established in 1777 to house Polynesian artefacts collected by Captain James Cook in the South Sea Islands. The museum was then housed in Regent House, above Front Arch, and soon expanded to include natural history specimens - mammals, fish, insects, reptiles, birds, plants and now-extinct animals including a Great Auk and a Tasmanian wolf. The Polynesian artefacts were subsequently presented to the National Museum of Ireland - where they remain in storage to this day - while the zoological specimens were moved to their own purpose-built museum on the campus in 1876. In the 1960s, the museum, like many others of its kind, was altered dramatically to accommodate other disciplines and to provide additional research and teaching space for the expanding zoology department. This resulted in much of the museum collection being placed into storage to make way for the restructuring process. Hugely popular in the 19th century, the museum gradually fell into decline, though much of the collection, thankfully, remained intact. ‘By the millennium, the museum display areas had seriously declined,’ says Dr Martyn Linnie, curator of the museum, ‘specimens were simply stored cheek by jowl, head to tail, in poorly designed display cabinets. So in 2002 we began reaching out to alumni for support. There was a synergy to it because the collection, which is vast - 25,000 specimens - was largely donated by alumni in the 19th century. The response was exceptional – we were able to restore specimens to their former glory, renovate the main exhibition spaces, install new display cases, and open the museum to the public each year from June to October. Before COVID forced temporary closure of the museum two years ago, we were getting up to 10,000 visitors each summer.’ The continued success of the museum was reflected in 2015 when it was awarded full accreditation to the coveted Museum Standards Programme for Ireland. Visitors love the museum because it’s tactile and interactive – many items, including a narwhal tusk, shark jaws and a mammoth tooth, are displayed on tables for people to handle. Volunteers and guides – current zoology students and recent graduates – engage directly with visitors, regaling them with the colourful back-stories of the ‘residents’. The collection is directly linked to the moderatorship degree so the guides draw on knowledge and personal experiences from their training as zoologists.
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