To the untrained eye, these unremarkable slides seem filthy-each looks like it’s been smudged by dirty fingers. Next to one of these microscopes, curator Marina Potapova pops open a notebook-sized plastic container brimming with glass slides. Many of the academy’s most unassuming yet impactful treasures are filed away on its second floor, in an office space crowded with hulking cabinets and microscopes. Among the 19 million or so specimens housed here are plants procured on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, blue marlin reeled in by Ernest Hemingway, and America’s first mounted dinosaur skeleton.
As the oldest natural science institution in the western hemisphere, the academy has accumulated a trove of remarkable specimens. Its neoclassical facade is covered in natural motifs-doorways flanked by ammonites, handrails that curl into ferns, bronze door handles shaped like ibis skulls. Nestled in the heart of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University emanates the aura of a sprawling cabinet of curiosities. This story originally appeared in Hakai magazine and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
0 kommentar(er)
