The Alabama Museum of Natural History, located in Smith Hall, was built in 1831 and boasts the title of the oldest museum in the state. The museum has produced a variety of exhibits and gathered an abundance of collection material that occassionally makes appearances in the museum’s three galleries that are changed every semester.

While current exhibits feature the ancient sea monsters of Alabama, the April 27, 2011, tornado and rocks from around the world, there are also many items at the museum that are not on display.

“We have a lot of pieces on loan,” Randy Mecredy, director of the museum, said. “Also, probably less than 0.1 percent of what we have in collection is on display in the museum. Everything else is used for research purposes.”

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The museum pieces not on display are stored on the third and fourth floors of Mary Harmon Bryant Hall. Completed 10 years ago, the space is temperature- and humidity-controlled to ensure the longevity of the museum collection. Lydia Ellington, museum collections technician, said the museum storage facility holds 12 different collections, which include historic photographs, taxidermy, geology, textiles and more.

“Our museum has been collecting since the early 1800s, so we have a very wide array of pieces,” she said.

Walking through the many rows of the museum storage facility, one can see the collection of more than 30,000 butterfly specimens, animal skins, skulls and even a shrunken head. Precious rocks, telegraph insulators and ancient handcrafted artifacts line the walls. There are also many pieces related to the University including artifacts from Eugene A. Smith and the Confederate Army uniform of Josiah Gorgas. Additionally, there is an extensive collection of human remains from prehistoric Alabama.

“Not everything has been inventoried, but we do have a very good record system,” Ellington said. “We have not reached capacity yet on what we can hold in here. Especially with our Paleolithic collections, we have people gathering all the time.”

A variety of these pieces are open to professors to use for instruction and many professors have used the museum’s pieces for education in fields such as biology, art history and geology.

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“Natural history collections are incredibly important resources for education, research and service,” Leslie Rissler, associate professor and curator of herpetology, said.

Rissler said she takes advantage of the many artifacts for her class on field zoology using specimens from the bird, mammal, amphibian and reptile collections.

“The physical collections are important resources because they document a species in a particular location, and these can change with time due to extirpation, extinction or range shifts due to climate change,” Rissler said. “Students also love to see the specimens, many of which were gathered by our most cherished graduate of UA, Dr. Edward O. Wilson.”

Dana Ehret, curator of paleontology, has the students in his Vertebrate Paleontology honors seminar create a social media project on any item from the museum’s collections they choose. Ehret said he hopes that the museum can utilize the presentations on the museum Facebook page.

“Having access to the museum’s collections is a fantastic addition to teaching,” Ehret said. “While some students learn by reading, others are tactile learners. So by being able to bring specimens into the classroom, and have students see and touch them can really enhance their learning experience. When discussing extinct forms of life, being able to show actual fossils can help students understand what these organisms looked like.”

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