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THE UNIVERSITY MUSEUMS
THE University Museums consist of four teaching and research units, a Section of Exhibits, and a service unit of librarian, artist, craftsman, receptionist and information clerk, secretary, and superintendent of the building. Each of the four museums — the Museum of Zoology, the Museum of Paleontology, the Museum of Anthropology, and the University Herbarium — comprises a notable collection in its particular field, and a staff of specialists is responsible for the care, growth, arrangement, and productive use of the collection in research and teaching. Such museums, designed as tools in the biological sciences, document our growing knowledge of the tremendous diversity and yet orderliness of organic life by providing a repository of authentically determined and naturally arranged specimens. They are used for reference by the naturalist, the conservationist, and other workers in cognate fields and provide essential data for continuing study on the related problems of the evolution, distribution, and classification of organisms (see the separate articles on these museums).
The research and teaching collections are necessarily detailed and huge. They require extensive series with attached technical data and involve problems of preparation, compact storage, and arrangement that fit them for the use of the special student rather than the general public. A special Section of Exhibits staffed by scientifically trained specialists and equipped to present a less detailed but clear and accurate account of the data and principles of natural history is thus an essential part of the Museums' contribution to general education.
The exhibits occupy the entire second, third, and fourth floors of the Washtenaw Avenue wing of the Museums Building and a series of wall cases in the rotunda. The rotunda exhibits are a frequently changed series of topical displays arranged to show some phase of the work of the research museums, the sequence of techniques used in the construction of a new exhibit, or material of current interest in conservation or natural history.
The exhibits on the second floor form the Hall of Evolution and are arranged to illustrate the sequence of life through the geological ages. In large part the exhibits are actual fossils, but much use is made of reconstructions and models, and of dioramas that represent past geological ages in three-dimensional scenes with typical animals and plants shown as though alive in their ancient habitats. Many of the exhibits are of special interest because they are also a part of the research and teaching collections of the Museum of Paleontology, and many of the skeletal preparations and restorations were made by or under the direction of Michigan's great paleontologist and teacher, Ermine C. Case. The Guide to the Hall of Evolution facilitates their use and enjoyment.
On the third and fourth floors are modern animals and plants, with dioramas and cases given to Michigan's early Indian populations and cultures. The native fauna and flora of Michigan on the third floor show the wealth and variety of our state's wild life and enable the nature lover to observe at close range named specimens of the forms he has seen out-of-doors. The more elaborate exhibits of the fourth floor, by means of dioramas and selected groups of specimens and models, present important relationships and interdependencies