Galerie de Paléontologie et d'Anatomie comparée, Natural history museum in Jardin des Plantes, Paris, France
The Galerie de Paléontologie et d'Anatomie comparée is a natural history museum in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, displaying fossil vertebrate skeletons and comparative anatomy specimens on two floors. The building has tall windows that let in generous natural light, making the bones and casts easy to examine up close.
The building was designed by Ferdinand Dutert and opened in 1898 as part of the National Museum of Natural History. It was built at a time when scientific interest in evolution was growing rapidly across Europe.
The building's name is tied to its two founding professors: Georges Cuvier set up the first comparative anatomy cabinet in 1802, and Albert Gaudry's temporary paleontology rooms of 1885 grew into this gallery. The ground floor keeps Cuvier's comparative anatomy collection, while the upper floors hold Gaudry's fossil vertebrates and, since the early 2010s, fossil plants.
The gallery stands at the start of rue Buffon, on the eastern side of the Jardin des Plantes near the Gare d'Austerlitz and place Valhubert. The comparative anatomy collections fill the ground floor, while fossil vertebrates occupy the first floor and fossil invertebrates and plants the second, so the visit follows a vertical route through three levels.
The second floor was occupied by anthropology collections until 1937, when they moved to the new Musée de l'Homme; since then it has held fossil invertebrates, joined by fossil plants from the early 2010s. The building is almost 80 metres long and was inaugurated on 21 July 1898.
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