Mammal Division History
The mammal collection of the Museum of Zoology was established in 1837, when the State Legislature authorized
the University to establish a cabinet of natural history. The collections were formally organized as a
museum and designated the Museum of Zoology in 1882. The collection grew rapidly following creation of the Museum,
and the inevitable shortage of storage space was alleviated by a new Museums building in 1928. Although this
building housed the Herbarium, exhibition halls, and the museums of Anthropology, Paleontology, and Zoology,
it was designed primarily to meet the needs of the Museum of Zoology, which occupied about four-fifths of the
240 foot long, five story high, research wing of the building.
In 1964, a five-story wing of over 20,000 sq. ft. of net usable space was added to the old building. All of it is occupied by the Museum of Zoology. This new wing includes several laboratories used for molecular systematic studies, live-animal facilities, a sound-recording lab, and offices, in addition to some collection space.
The mammal collection remained small and provincial until 1919, when Lee R. Dice became curator of mammals. Since
that time, it has increased tremendously in size and importance, first nationally and then on an international basis,
due to the efforts of Dice and subsequent curators, including William H. Burt, Emmet T. Hooper, Douglas Lay, Philip Myers,
Lawrence Heaney, and Priscilla Tucker. Between 1919 and 1929, most collection growth was the result of area surveys,
which provided the first thorough documentation of the distribution of mammals in the region around the Great Lakes.
These collections were supplemented by Dice's extensive investigations of the systematics of the Lagomorpha. In 1927,
interest began to shift to more distant areas (especially the southwestern United States) and to laboratory colonies to
provide data to help answer questions about wild populations. A highly productive period followed, in which ecological and
systematic studies of mammals in their native environments were interlocked with anatomical and genetic investigations of
living animals in the laboratory. In 1934, Dice and his laboratory transferred to a newly formed Laboratory of Vertebrate
Genetics, created specifically to house his research.
Currently, the collection is the third largest university-based mammal collection in this country, and it ranks fifth or sixth in size among all US mammal collections. An unusual feature of the mammal collection at the Museum of Zoology is our emphasis on non-traditional specimens; that is, preparations that go beyond or replace the traditional skin and skull. Our fluid collection numbers over 15,000 specimens. This collection was a special focus of an NSF-funded facilities renovation in 1972-75, and as a result, is exceptionally well-curated and accessible. The collection of post-cranial skeletons is also very large, over 10,000 specimens. In it we have emphasized not only breadth of coverage, but also the accumulation of series of specimens to document geographic and within-population variation. We also maintain a very large collection of bacula and cleared and stained glandes penes.
The mammal collection at Michigan was one of the first large collections in the country to computerize its catalogs. The project began with NSF support in 1977. A catalog of the main collection was completed by 1982. A second grant from NSF funded an effort to check and edit the main catalog, and also to complete data capture of several special collections. This project was finished in 1984. The software Taxir, run on the University's the mainframe system (MTS), provided the core of the project. This system remained in place and fully operational until 1994, when the University decentralized its computing facility. At that time we shifted the collection catalog to a widely-used, commercial database system, Filemaker. This program provides us with the ability to query, add specimens, edit existing records, and make labels.