About
What is the Museum used for?
Established in 1905 by Professor Alfred Denny the Museum houses specimens across the animal kingdom, with the aim to represent every major animal group, including species from a variety of habitats all over the world.
It is predominantly used as teaching museum, however some of it's collections are also used in research.
Public outreach:
The museum is now holds guided tours for the public on the first Saturday of every month.
Teaching:
The museum is a valuable resource in Bioscience teaching. Specifically it is used to teach modules on biodiversity and evolution to undergraduates.
Students study the taxonomic features of real life specimens aiding understanding of core principles of biological science: classification, evolution and adaptation.
The museum is also used to develop a number of practical skills such as the creation of scientific diagrams. Second year students spending many hours within the museum drawing the diversity of animal life and annotating diagrams with key features.
See examples of student work here.
Historic use of the Museum:
The facility has been in continuous use for teaching undergraduates at the University of Sheffield for more than 100 years, and continues to be used as a valuable teaching resource within the bioscience department. Many of the specimens we house have been in the museum since the early 1900s when natural history collecting was at its peak. Others have been created by previous curators such as the double specimens made by Oskars Lusis.
The history of the museum is interwoven with that of the university, and additionally links with many influential scientists and naturalists from Sheffield such as Henry Seebohm, H.C. Sorby and Arthur Doncaster.
Below is a short video created in 2014 about the history of the museum and some of the specimens.
Where do our specimens come from?
Historic specimens:
Due to the WWII bombings and subsequent fires the collection records for the majority of the specimens have been lost, so we are unable to track down their origin. From the information remaining we know there was at least one private zoo in Sheffield that donated or sold the remains of animals that had died to the museum. There are also some records detailing purchases of specimens from specialist companies that obtained, prepared and sold animal remains. These taxidermy and natural history commercial specialists were a commonplace at the time both for educational and recreational use.
We can assume given the context of the time and both Alfred and Henry's interest in collections, that alongside the purchase of specimens from specialists, many were obtained on their own research expeditions or donated from individuals traveling around the colonies. For example, some of our specimens were collected from the Challenger Expedition: the first exploration of the global deep seas where over 5000 new species were discovered.
A few of our specimens share duplicates with the British museum, and are referenced in documented correspondences between private collectors and other UK museums. Most of our fossils are casts of originals held in museums across the world.
When the museum downsized and relocated some specimens were donated to the Weston Park Museum, while others were donated to academic staff at the university. Some of our volunteers are looking through the archives and searching for remaining records, letters of correspondence and other material that could provide greater information or clues to the history of the museum, collections/specimens and Alfred Denny.
Donations:
A number of specimens in our collection have been donated from researchers at the University such as our Heliconius butterfly display, our fieldwork and teaching insect collections, otter prey display. While others have been donated from members of the public for example the Leach's storm petrel and the Phillip Gordon egg collection.
Behind the scenes:
There is a wealth of behind the scenes work that goes into maintaining the museum and improving the accessibility of its collections for education and research.
This ranges from repairing specimens, curating and maintaining displays , cataloguing + databasing items in our archives and much more. This work is undertaken by our curators, technicians and a dedicated team of volunteers.