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THE MUSEUM OF PALEONTOLOGY
THE Museum of Paleontology had its origin in the Cabinet of Natural History provided for in 1837 at the first meeting of the Board of Regents. The fossils earliest acquired for the cabinet were collected on Isle Royale by Douglass Houghton, the first state geologist of Michigan and one of the first appointees to the faculty of the University.
The early paleontological collections were received as a result of a clause in the act of the state legislature in 1838 creating the Michigan Geological Survey, which provided that duplicate specimens should be deposited at the University. Another and equally important factor in the development of paleontology was the ability and influence of Alexander Winchell.
The Museum of Paleontology at Michigan reflects to a great extent the personalities of three men: Alexander Winchell, 1855 to 1873 and 1879 to 1891; Carl A. Rominger, 1860 to 1907, and Ermine Cowles Case, 1907 to 1941. In the interval between Houghton's death in 1845 and Winchell's appointment in 1855 Abram Sager, who filled the chair of zoology and botany, appears to have been in charge of the paleontological collections. Winchell was the first appointee to the chair of geology after Houghton.
Winchell's published appraisal of the fossil specimens received from the first Michigan Geological Survey indicates his concern for the paleontological collections of the Museum:
They embraced however but a limited number of fossils and most of these were in an imperfect state of preservation… The paucity of fossils in this collection is naturally attributable to two good causes: first, the remarkable fewness of fossiliferous outcrops, especially at that period in our municipal history, and second, the nature of the methods by which surveys were prosecuted at that stage of scientific development.
Report
From sources other than the Geological Survey Winchell records among the principal accessions to the Museum prior to his appointment:
T. R. Chase, Esq., of Cleveland, Ohio, an alumnus of the University, presented a fine collection of coal-plants from the coal mines of northern Ohio; to which he added in June, 1863, a small lot of fossils, finely preserved, from Kelly's Island, Lake Erie.
Prof. Abram Sager, M.D., has given the Museum … a magnificent specimen of Syringopora from this State.
Winchell
The Cabinet of Natural History was first placed in one of the professors' houses. In 1856 a dormitory room in (old) Mason Hall was remodeled to accommodate the Library and Museum (R.P., 1856, p. 649). Since other collections of the University besides natural history were included in the Museum it was necessary in 1862 to appropriate the North Room of Mason Hall for the Museum. The Library was moved in 1863, providing increased room for the natural science collections. These were moved into the first Museum Building (the present Romance Language Building) when it was completed in 1881. When the Natural Science Building was opened in 1915 the paleontology collections were placed in the basement and first-floor rooms of the Geology Department's section. In 1928 the University Museums Building, at the corner of Washtenaw and North University avenues, was erected, and the Museum of Paleontology was housed in its present quarters on the first floor of the Washtenaw Avenue wing. Provision was made