Museo storia naturale di Pisa

Museo storia naturale di Pisa is an Italian natural history museum at Pisa. It is part of the University of Pisa and is now located in Pisa Charterhouse 10 km from the city of Pisa in the comune (municipality)of Calci.

In 1596, Grand Duke Ferdinand I of Tuscany established the Museum of Natural History of the University of Pisa, transferring specimens from the Florentine palaces of the Medici, particularly from the Uffizi. This was expanded to serve the natural history faculties of the University of Pisa. Initially, the gallery was in the botanic gardens (Orto botanico di Pisa). The oldest collections in the museum are Niccolò Gualtieri’s shells. (In 1814, the Botanic Garden (directed by G. Savi) was separated from the Natural History Museum (directed by G.Santi) and in 1827, Paolo Savi, assembled more than five thousand zoological specimens which are mostly extant.

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  Paolo Savi

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  Dinosaur court

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  Whale hall

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  Palaeoanthropology (history)

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  Cetacean evolution

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  Giraffe skeleton

Galleries

• Aquarium
• Dinosaur court and gallery
• Palaeontology of Monti Pisani
• History of the collections
• Amphibians and Reptiles
• Mammals
• Birds
• Palaeoanthropology
• Evolution of Whales (Cetacea)
• Whale gallery
• Mineral gallery
• Prehistory of Monti Pisani

Vertebrate collections

The museum contains the osteology collections of Richiardi Sebastiano. The bird collection consists of 9,000 mounts and c. 1,000 skins,275 (partial) skeletons, 1,100 eggs, 800 nests, and 450 anatomical.The bird collection is specialised in Italy, especially the Pisa area and Toscana region generally (e.g. the Savi coll also the Americas, Central & South Africa,Middle East, SE Asia, Australia, with birds of virtually all families and includes extinct birds like Fregilupus varius and Pinguinus impennis.

Mollusc collections

The museum contains shells collected by:

• Niccolò Gualtieri about 700 samples.The importance of this collection is demonstrated by the fact that it was studied by Carl Linnaeus, who in the tenth edition of Systema Naturae used many of these shells as types.
• Georg Eberhard Rumphius acquired in 1747 by Francesco di Lorena for the Pisan Gallery

Insect collections

The museum contains insects collected by:

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

Fossils

The collection includes exceptional fossils from Italy for instance specimens from Monte Bolca.

References

• Tosi A., 2002. Art and science between neoclassicism and romanticism: the Botanical Garden in the modern age. In: Garbari F., Tongiorgi Tomasi L., Tosi A., Giardino dei Semplici — Garden of Simples: 189–209. Ed. Plus, Pisa.
• Tosi A., 2002. Il Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe. In: AA.VV., Arte e Scienza nei musei dell’Università di Pisa: 313–327. Ed. Plus, Pisa.

External links

• Official website (Italian)
• History of the Natural History Collections in Pisa
  • Braschi S., Cagnolaro L., Nicolosi P. (2007). Catalogo dei Cetacei del Museo di Storia Naturale e del Territorio dell’Università di Pisa, alla Certosa di Calci. Note osteometriche e ricerca storica. Atti Soc. tosc. Sci. nat., Mem., Serie B, 114, pagg. 1-22, figg.10.