Historical Fossil Fish Collection

The collections of Fossil Fish were originally part of the Department of Ichthyology and Herpetology. In 1944 (see letter in Hussakof correspondence Dec. 1, 1944) they were moved to the Department of Geology and Paleontology, which later became the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology. Bashford Dean (1867-1928) was a curator of arms and armor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and honorary curator of the Department of Ichthyology at the American Museum of Natural History. He also was a professor of zoology at Columbia University. Dean's interest in armor and fishes began in his early childhood. He attended college at the City College of New York, studied geology and fossil fishes at Columbia University and received a Ph.D. from Columbia University at 23 years of age, his dissertation was entitled "Pineal Fontanelle of Placoderm and Catfish." As the curator of the Department of Fishes at the AMNH, Dean, along with his assistant, Louis Hussakof, planned and directed the installation of a series of mounted habitat groups, illustrating the life and habits of the ganoid fishes. He and his staff also installed the synoptic exhibit of fishes and the "fossil aquarium," containing life-like restorations of many of the fossil fishes of the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland. The AMNH assisted in his extensive work, "Bibliography of Fishes." (source: William K. Gregory, Science, December 28, 1928, Volume 68, No. 1774, pages 635-638.) Bashford Dean was appointed Curator of Fishes and Reptiles in the then newly created Department of Ichythology and Herpetology in 1909. In 1913 he was given the rank of Curator Emeritus through 1917. He held the title Honorary Curator until his death in 1928.