Florida Museum of Natural History begins centennial anniversary celebration

UF added another piece of history to its legacy Tuesday.

University administrators and the community celebrated as the Florida Museum of Natural History added a historic marker to recognize its centennial anniversary as the state’s official natural history museum.

UF President Kent Fuchs and the museum’s director, Doug Jones, unveiled the marker as about 200 people looked on. The event was the first of many the museum plans to hold throughout 2017.

“This is just the beginning of a large number of celebratory events that the museum will have,” Fuchs said. “It’s part of our heritage from the very first day that we were a university.”

The museum is 125 years old, but it was signed into legislation as the official state-designated natural history museum 100 years ago, Jones said at the event.

Over the past year, the museum’s staff discovered about 200 species and published 218 peer-reviewed books and articles, he said. The museum gets about 200,000 visitors each year.

The museum, once a one-floor building, now holds more than 40 million specimens and has a budget of about $30 million, museum spokesman Paul Ramey said.

“We’re one of the top university-based museums in the country and have one of the largest research collections,” he said.

Fuchs said the museum has been able to balance its attractions while emphasizing research.

“It’s become a wonderful place for the public to see butterflies and skeletons of mammoths and fossils of dinosaurs,” he said. “But it’s also a research place for scholars to do research on some of these exhibits.”

UF Provost Joe Glover, who attended the event, said the celebration was a moment to look back at the museum’s history.

“I think it’s a wonderful occasion that reflects a century of incredible service both to the state of Florida and to the scientific community around the nation and around the world,” Glover said.