The Department of Natural History at the Florida Museum, University of Florida, employs 28 faculty-curators and 22 collection managers who pursue great diverse scientific questions within anthropological, biological, and paleontological sciences.
Training the Next Generation of Scientists
The Department also houses a vibrant and diverse community of over 100 graduate students and 25 post-doctoral researchers. In any given year over 150 undergraduate students are trained in our collections and research labs. In the most recent fiscal year our faculty, associated staff, and students produced over 200 peer-reviewed scientific publications and taught 50 university courses.
Documenting Biodiversity and Cultural Heritage
Additionally, faculty-curators supervise the growth and maintenance of scientific collections containing more than 40 million of modern and fossil specimens of plants, animals, and archaeological and ethnographic materials – one of the largest such university-based resources in the world. Housed in the Florida Museum of Natural History (the official natural history museum of the state of Florida), these collections were initiated over a century ago and continue to grow rapidly. The collections house materials assembled from all over the world and are of inestimable value to understanding the history of life on earth.
Exceptional Productivity
The Department had an outstanding year with 27 faculty overseeing about $65 million in total external grant support for research and collection activities, including 36 new and 24 continuing grants totaling $8.3 million. This per-capita funding rate is high, even for a research-intensive university like the University of Florida.
Latest Research News
Study provides road map for measuring animal, plant traits to meet global biodiversity goals
An international team of researchers has outlined a plan for how to measure changes in key traits of animals and plants and provide these data to policymakers...
The walking dead: Fossils on the move can distort patterns of mass extinctions
Using the fossil record to accurately estimate the timing and pace of past mass extinctions is no easy task, and a new study highlights how fossil evidence can...
DNA from shark tooth in boy’s leg used to ID species in bite incident
A small tooth fragment plucked from a 13-year-old boy’s leg after he was bitten by a shark off the coast of New York gave scientists the chance to test a...