Join the North Carolina Botanical Garden and the Carolina Biodiversity Collaborative for our annual Darwin Day Lecture!
‘Damned beastly devilment:’ Charles Darwin’s dalliance with vertebrate fossils during the voyage of the Beagle
with Paul Brinkman, Environmental Humanities Research Lab Head and Curator of Special Collections, NC Museum of Natural Sciences. Moderated by Damon Waitt, NCBG Director.
Charles Darwin, with the help of his shipmates and a local network of landowners, merchants, and guides, made an important collection of vertebrate fossils in South America during the voyage of HMS Beagle (1831-1836). At first, Darwin doubted the usefulness of his fossils. Eventually, however, these specimens would prove to be the most satisfying as well as one of the most scientifically significant collections Darwin made during the voyage. This presentation will explore Darwin’s brief dalliance with vertebrate paleontology.
About the Speaker
Paul D. Brinkman is a museum curator with overlapping interests in the sciences and the humanities. He graduated from Augustana College with a B.A. degree in history and a minor in geology. In 2005, he completed a Ph.D. in history of science at the University of Minnesota. A bibliophile and an avid traveler, he is equally at home in the library or in the field. His research interest is in history of nineteenth-century natural sciences, especially geology and paleontology. He has published a number of articles on Charles Darwin, on museum history, and on history of American vertebrate paleontology. His latest book, Now is the Time to Collect: Daniel Elliot, Carl Akeley, & the Field Columbian Museum Zoological Expedition to Africa in 1896, was published by the University of Alabama Press in 2024. He works at the N. C. Museum of Natural Sciences and teaches part-time in the History Department at N. C. State University.