Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa

The museum is organized into two sectors.

One sector includes the

• Aquarium
• Temporary Exhibitions
• Prehistory of Monte Pisano

The other sector includes the permanent exhibitions of

• Historical Gallery
• Garden
• Amphibians and Reptiles gallery
• Mammals gallery
• Hall of Archaeocetes
• Cetacean gallery
• Hall of the evolution of man
• Mineral gallery
• Room "The Earth between myth and science.”
• Geological eras gallery
• Dinosaur Halls
• Evolution of birds

File:Distichodus sexfasciatus at Calci Aquarium.jpg ]]

The museum has the largest freshwater aquarium in Italy{{cite web|date=10 May 2016|title=Il più grande acquario d'acqua dolce d'Italia|trans-title=The largest freshwater aquarium in Italy|url=https://www.msn.unipi.it/it/il-piu-grande-acquario-dacqua-dolce-ditalia/|website=Museo di Storia Naturale dell'Università di Pisa|language=it}} at 60,000 liters.{{cite web|date=13 May 2016|title=Inaugurazione dell'Acquario di Calci|trans-title=Inauguration of the Calci Aquarium|url=https://www.unipi.it/index.php/eventi-area-scientifico-tecnologica/event/2478-inaugurazione-dell-acquario-di-calci|website=unipi.it|language=it}} The first sector of the exhibition is entirely dedicated to Lake Tanganyika and hosts various specimens of cichlids belonging to the Tropheus. The second section houses dipnoi, arowana, some freshwater puffers, an axolotl colony, a softshell turtle and a mata mata specimen. The third sector is the largest tank and is dedicated to Koi carp. The fourth and fifth sectors show off world fish biodiversity with Asian giant gourami, the American Oscar fish and the alligator pike.{{cite web|date=9 May 2016|title=A Calci il più grande acquario d'acqua dolce|trans-title=In Calci the largest freshwater aquarium|url=https://cascinanotizie.it/calci-il-pi%C3%B9-grande-acquario-dacqua-dolce|website=cascinanotizie.it|language=it}}

This room is dedicated to the excavations that were started in 1847 of the Lion's Cave in Agnano.

Leopold Blaschka produced marine invertebrate glass reproductions. The museum has 51 examples. The collection is a remarkable example of the fusion between science and craftsmanship.File:Blaschka 1.jpg

A project to devote the garden to the plants of Monte Pisano is currently underway.

Over 300 specimens are spread over the third floor, including an example of the Père David’s deer.

There is a 50 thousand-year-old fossil skeleton of Hippopotamus antiquus. Also, there is a reconstruction of Indohyus, a terrestrial mammal ancestor of modern cetaceans. The exhibition then continues with the cast of a skeleton and the reconstruction of an Ambulocetus natans, an ancient cetacean that was probably able to both swim and walk.

There is a holotype of Aegyptocetus tarfa found in 2002 by a marble cutter of Pietrasanta in a block of Egyptian limestone. The path then ends with a series of casts of fossils belonging to Cynthiacetus.{{cite web|title=Archaeocetes|url=https://www.msn.unipi.it/en/archaeocetes/}}File:Protocetidae - Aegyptocetus tarfa.JPG]]

The cetacean collection was significantly enriched between the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, thanks to then-director Sebastiano Richiardi to create a collection that had at least one specimen for each species of existing cetacean.

The cetacean gallery is a 110-meter long space surmounted by a gabled roof. When the friars still inhabited the Certosa, it was used for drying hay and grains, which were then stored in the numerous silos located at the edge of the structure. The exhibition was organized in 2018 into eight thematic areas containing more than 28 skeletons from the 27 species present in the collection, as well as 11 life-sized models including a baleen, five casts of fossils mostly discovered and studied by the team of the University of Pisa, such as that of Livyatan melvillei as well as from real fossils, such as the holotypes of Balaenula astensis, found in Portacomaro in 1940.

Most are skeletal remains, although there are also preparations preserved in liquid. While this is not the largest in the number of specimens, it has the largest diversity with 27 different species. The gallery contains complete skeletons of Hector's dolphin, White-beaked dolphin, Finless porpoise, and the very rare Andrews' beaked whale; as well as those of the Sei whale and blue whale, the latter purchased, again by Richiardi, in 1900 from the Museum of Natural History of Bergen, in Norway. Also, the museum also houses the only adult skeletons of Humpback whales and North Atlantic right whales present in Italy, the only two Killer Whale skeletons in Italy, the only two complete with beluga, and the only one complete with boreal hyperodon.{{Cite journal|date=2007|title=Catalogo dei Cetacei attuali del Museo di Storia Naturale e del Territorio dell'Università di Pisa, alla Certosa di Calci. Note Osteometriche e Ricerca storica|url=https://www.msn.unipi.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/esposizione-cetacei-1.pdf|journal=Atti della Società Toscana di Scienze Naturali|volume=114|pp=1–22}}{{cite journal |last1=Cagnolaro |first1=Luigi |title=Collections of extant Cetaceans in Italian museums and other scientific institutions. A comparative review |journal=Atti Società Italiana Scienze Naturali, Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano |volume=153 |issue=2 |pages=145–202 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236655545_Collections_of_extant_Cetaceans_in_Italian_museums_and_other_scientific_institutions_A_comparative_review |accessdate=19 October 2020}} Alongside the collection of current cetaceans, the museum also possesses various finds of fossil cetaceans of various origins and acquisitions. However, a large part of them was donated to the Museum by the Florentine paleontologist Roberto Lawley, such as an individual's remains from Etruridelphis giulii.{{cite journal |last1=Bianucci |first1=Giovanni |title=CLe collezioni a cetacei fossili del Museo di Storia Naturale dell’Università di Pisa |journal=Museologia Scientifica Memorie |date=2014 |volume=13 |pages=93–102 |url=https://www.academia.edu/25903107/Le_collezioni_a_cetacei_fossili_del_Museo_di_Storia_Naturale_dell_Universit%C3%A0_di_Pisa}}

There is also a blue whale, and the fin whale. The collection includes the mandible of a sperm whale beached in 1714 in Populonia.{{cite web|title=Cetaceans|url=https://www.msn.unipi.it/en/cetaceans/}}

File:Balaenoptera musculus skeleton at University of Pisa's Natural History Museum.jpg

This hall includes a full-scale reconstruction of a portion of the 31,000-year old painted wall of the Chauvet cave (Ardèche, France).{{citation needed|date=November 2020}}

A large collection of minerals from the Tuscan area as well as the largest Italian meteorite: the 48 kg Bagnone’s Octahedrite. File:Meteorite di Bagnone.JPG

A 9-meter by 5-meter wooden reconstruction of Noah's Ark with 160 animals beside a cyclops and a unicorn.

The biblical myth is contested by descriptive panels, samples of volcanic rocks, and explanations of Earth's origin through evolution.

In 2020, this gallery is partly under construction. The collection includes, Carnotaurus sastrei, Amargasaurus cazaui, Kritosaurus and a nesting plain of Saltasaurs.

File:DinosaursCalci.JPG

19 life-size avian models from the Mesozoic explain the transition from dinosaurs to birds. The museum contains the osteology collections of Sebastiano Richiardi. The bird collection consists of 9,000 mounts, 1,000 skins, 275 skeletons, 1,100 eggs, 800 nests, and 450 anatomical specimens.

File:Great auk at natural history museum of Pisa university.jpg]]

The museum contains:

• 700 samples collected by Niccolò Gualtieri, which were studied by Carl Linnaeus . Linnaeus used many of these specimens in his tenth edition of his Systema Naturae.
• Samples from Georg Eberhard Rumphius acquired in 1747 by Francesco di Lorena.

The museum contains insects collected by:

• Édouard Ménétries
• Carlo Giuseppe Gené
• Imre Frivaldszky
• Pierre François Marie Auguste Dejean
• Maximilian Spinola
• Carlo Passerini

File:Ferdinando I de' Medici by Scipione Pulzone.jpg

The museum dates back to the 16th century when the Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinando I de 'Medici set up a cabinet of curiosities attached to the Giardino dei Semplici.{{cite book|last1=Monechi|first1=Simonetta|title=Il Museo di Storia Naturale dell'Università degli Studi di Firenze. Le collezioni geologiche e paleontologiche / The Museum of Natural History of the University of Florence. The Geological and Paleontological Collections|last2=Rook|first2=Lorenzo|year=2009|isbn=978-8864531892}}

The direction was entrusted to Luca Ghini, founder and curator of the botanical garden.{{cite web|title=Fine 1500: le origini del Museo|trans-title=Late 1500s: the origins of the Museum|url=https://www.msn.unipi.it/it/fine-1500-le-origini-approfondimento/|accessdate=14 October 2020|language=it}} In 1595, Ferdinando ordered that the various Florentine naturalistic collections was brought into the museum and founded one of the first museums in the world.

The museum was enriched with new collections: in particular, in 1747, Francis I of Lorraine bought an important part of the malacological collection for the museum of the Florentine physician Niccolò Gualtieri, including more than three thousand specimens collected by the Dutch naturalist Georg Eberhard Rumphius.{{cite web|title=1600-1700: declino e ascesa|trans-title=1600-1700: decline and rise|url=https://www.msn.unipi.it/it/1600-1700-il-temporaneo-declino-e-la-successiva-espansione/|accessdate=14 October 2020|language=it}}

In the 19th century, the museum had its period of maximum expansion. In 1814, the University of Pisa decided to separate the chairs of scientific teaching, entrusting Gaetano Savi with that of Botany and Giorgio Santi that of zoology, paleontology and geology. This separation of the chairs meant that the museum, which also included the botanical collections under a single direction, was divided into two distinct administrations with greater decision-making autonomy.

File:PaoloSavi.JPG]]

Under the direction of Paolo Savi, the collections were enriched, the exhibition spaces were enlarged, and hundreds of writings were published. Savi called upon the Neapolitan Leopoldo Pilla to fill the museum and this brought a large number of Vesuvian rocks and crystals with him.{{cite web|title=1800: l'autonomia e la fortuna|trans-title=1800: autonomy and luck|url=https://www.msn.unipi.it/it/il-museo-nel-1800-approfondimento/|accessdate=14 October 2020|language=it}}

The museum was shaken by the world wars. During the Second World War, some of the collections were damaged by Allied bombings.{{cite web|title=Il Museo oggi: il miracolo della Certosa|trans-title=The Museum today: the miracle of the Certosa|url=https://www.msn.unipi.it/it/la-costituzione-del-museo-attuale/|accessdate=14 October 2020|language=it}}

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Category:Natural history museums in Italy

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