ON AN ALBUM OF PHOTOGRAPHS RECORDING FOSSILS IN THE "OLD COLLECTIONS" OF THE MUSEO DE LA PLATA AND AMEGHINO’S PRIVATE COLLECTION AT THE BEGINNING OF THE XXTH CENTURY

Abstract

An album of photographs in the Kansas University Natural History Museum found together with the Patagonian fossils collected by Handel T. Martin in 1904 was assumed in a recent publication to have been assembled by Martin. It comprises 193 numbered pages and 580 photographs of prepared fossil vertebrate specimens, some labeled as from the Museo de La Plata and others, without labels, which were assumed as having been in F. Ameghino’s private fossil collection. However, archival evidence in the Yale Peabody Museum indicates that the album is most likely the original copy of the photographic album assembled by William B. Scott during his visit to Argentina in 1901 to examine fossil specimens from Patagonia in the museums of La Plata and Buenos Aires, and in Ameghino’s collection. It represents an important record of the specimens present at these institutions and in possession of Ameghino near the turn of the last century, a period during which those fossils aroused considerable scientific interest and were in very high demand among researchers and academic institutions, but marked as well by severe conflicts between F. Ameghino and the Director of the Museo de La Plata, F.P. Moreno.  As a consequence the collections were subjected to considerable turmoil and many important specimens can no longer be located. The album provides visual references for these specimens and facilitates systematic and taxonomic research by helping to evaluate which specimens were used to erect numerous taxa and which were analyzed by other researchers who published on such remains.