“Louis Agassiz went to his grave trying to refute evolution,” Hanken says. “That’s why he amassed these huge collections. Through many of the early years of this museum, the main objectives were just to describe and categorize life on earth and to test Darwin’s theory of evolution.”

Although evolution is now a central tenet of biology, some aspects of the museum’s mission have remained constant since its establishment, according to Hansen.

“Even in the nineteenth century, there was a sense that the world was changing,” Hanken says. “A lot of natural history museums were created to collect information about animals and plants before they disappeared.”

This role is central to the concept of a collection, according to Hanken. He does concede, however, that there was a period when museums no longer seemed as relevant to scientific research.

“Thirty to forty years ago there was a sense, a false sense, that we knew all the organisms on our planet, and there would be no further role for natural history museums beyond libraries,” Hanken says. “This has not proven to be case.”

According to Hanken and his colleagues at the museum, the collections are undergoing a rebirth.

New DNA sampling technology and the Internet have allowed natural history museums to re-invent their relationship with the scientific community.

DNA from collections can be used to study organisms hard to access in the wild, uncovering their evolutionary patterns and the genetic variations of their populations at times in the past. This resurgence in the importance of collections has particularly profound implications at a place like Harvard.

From Frogs to DNA

The MCZ is applying the new science of DNA to gain insight into old specimens, according to Hanken.

“What you have in a collection is millions of dead animals, preserved for longterm use,” Hanken says. “These collections were made before molecular biology was born. The techniques of molecular biology allow us to go back to preserved specimens and pull out DNA from extinct organisms and endangered species.”

Because the information available in collections frequently can’t be found anywhere else, Hanken says he has found himself the keeper of key records in the global conservation effort.

“In the worldwide biodiversity crisis, with species disappearing, natural history museums represent historical records of distribution and abundance,” Hanken says. “We’re getting calls for information from countries all over the world.”

The demand for information has helped inspire the use of the Internet to disseminate information about Harvard’s collections.

“We’re doing as much as we can to make information about our holdings available on the Internet. You could search for information about all 300,000 of our herpetology specimens,” Hanken says. “People all over the world have ready access to our information.”