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Planet Mars

The American Museum of Natural History was established in 1869 in a world very different from today's. Even by the late 19th century, we did not have a firm knowledge of many of Earth's land regions and oceans, the diversity of cultures outside of western societies, and the essential history and organization of life on Earth. Darwin's revolutionary Origin of Species had been published only ten years before. It would be 30 more years before the structure of the atom would be revealed and the laws of heredity disclosed, 40 years before Einstein would share his theories of relativity, and 132 years before the entire three billion nucleotides of the human genome would be mapped.  MORE >

Ross MacPhee
Curator, Division of Vertebrate Zoology, Department of Mammalogy

Ross Macphee is the former chairman of the Department of Mammalogy at the American Museum of Natural History, where he has been Curator since 1988 and is the curator of the exhibit The Horse.   MORE >