History of the Palaeontology Department

Early Beginnings 

Sloane and the British Museum

Sir Hans Sloane was an eminent physician and a famous and well-travelled collector of ‘natural curiosities’ for his museum in Chelsea. 

His renowned collections were visited by many prominent contemporaries including:

• Benjamin Franklin
• Carl Linnaeus
• the composer George Frederick Handel, who in 1740 outraged Sloane by placing a buttered muffin on one of his open books

At the time of Sloane’s death in January 1753, the catalogue of his collections ran to 21 folio volumes, mostly written in his own hand. A synopsis drawn up by his executors listed 1,275 ‘fossils, flints, stones, &c.’.

About a hundred still exist. They are mostly British, including a mammoth tusk and fossil wood, but there is also a Sicilian sea urchin obtained from Agostino Scilla, who pioneered the idea that fossils are the remains of long-dead organisms.

Sloane’s executors were given the task of selling his collections to King George II or, failing that, to one of a number of academic institutions. 

Parliament agreed to the terms in Sloane’s will and an Act for the Establishment of the British Museum received Royal Assent on 7 June 1753, combining:

• Sloane’s Collection
• the Cottonian Library
• the Harleian Collections of books and manuscripts

The British Museum was initially located at Montagu House, Bloomsbury and from 1846 onwards in a new building on the same site.

Creating a Palaeontology department

The influence of Richard Owen

In 1856 Richard Owen was appointed Superintendent of the natural history departments of the British Museum. This had far-reaching consequences, both for the Department of Geology and the Museum as a whole.

As an eminent palaeontologist, Owen spent much of his time studying and increasing the Museum’s rich fossil collections. He was also the driving force behind the creation of the separate British Museum (Natural History) branch in 1881 and the building in South Kensington that still houses the Natural History Museum.

Expanding upward and outward in the 20th century

The Department of Geology soon outgrew its 1881 space allocation. In 1900 the total staff numbered 18, including 6 scientists. By the 1950s it had risen to 35 and a public gallery had been closed to house staff and collections in very overcrowded conditions, with some material stored offsite at an ex-World War Two facility at Ruislip.

In 1956 the Keeper of Geology, Dr Errol White, later Keeper of Palaeontology, campaigned forcefully for new accommodation. This resulted in the construction between 1972 and 1976 of the present Department of Palaeontology building at the east end of the Museum site, next to Exhibition Road. The Rt Hon Shirley Williams, Secretary of State for Education and Science officially opened the building on 24 May 1977.

The building’s external architecture was controversial, and remains so today. But finally the collections, then containing 7-8 million specimens, and staff, which had risen to 70 by the mid-1970s (including departmental housekeepers and porters known as housemen), were housed all together in a 10,000-square-metre, 7-storey building with modern office facilities and collections storage with expansion space.

Today 

Today the Palaeontology Department is more vibrant than ever with 

• over 100 day-to-day departmental members
• 43 permanent staff
• contract curatorial positions
• externally funded researchers
• research students
• scientific associates

The main Palaeontology Department building and services underwent a major upgrade between 2000 and 2004 to meet fire safety regulations and to ensure that environmental conditions were suitable for long-term preservation of the collections. 

On-site collection storage space is nearly full and some parts of the collections are now stored at the department’s off-site storage facility, which replaced the old Ruislip outstation in 1995.

Key dates