The Grant Museum of Zoology

These are glass models of jellyfish, sea anemones, gastropods, sea cucumbers and cephalopods, made in the mid 1800s by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka.
These rare models of invertebrates are fine examples of the highly specialised and skilled technique of glass model making, pioneered by the Czech father and son team. To read more about the history of the Grant Museum's Blaschka models download this pdf.

This box contains bones of the Dodo. These specimens are from the Mare aux Songes in the southeast of the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, where the Dodo lived. The Dodo was a flightless bird and a member of the pigeon family. Humans introduced many new animals to the island, including rats, pigs, goats and monkeys.
In 1638, the island was settled by the Dutch. It was probably a combination of the interference of invasive animals and hunting of the dodo for food that led to its rapid extinction. The last Dodos had probably disappeared by around 1700. However, there are now conservation efforts to return some areas of Mauritius to their former condition.

During the move of the Grant Museum to the Rockefeller Building in 2011, a second box of dodo bones including sterna, pelvises and leg bones was discovered in a cupboard. This is no on display alongside the original box.

This is one of only seven existing skeletons in the whole world. The quagga was a type of zebra that lived in South Africa which had less stripy bodies than zebras, looking much more like a horse from the front.
Its unusual colouring was one of the reasons why the species became extinct in the 1870s when hunters and European settlers killed the quaggas in large numbers for its pelt.

The thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger, was a large marsupial carnivore that lived in Australia and New Guinea. After European settlement, however, numbers began to fall because of hunting and loss of habitat. Many were shot by landowners because the thylacine was believed to prey on chickens and sheep. However, it is now largely accepted that thylacines had little impact on sheep.
They were seen as such a pest that from 1888 to 1912 the Tasmanian government even offered rewards to those who brought the head of a Thylacine. By 1936 a law was passed to protect the species, although it was too late, and the last known captive animal died that year.
The Grant Museum has several thylacine specimens, including an adult specimen preserved in fluid, dissected by or for Thomas Henry Huxley and several skulls.