Yale Peabody Museum Donates Fossil Cabinets To Bulawayo Museum

The Natural History Museum in Bulawayo has received a donation of 16 specialist fossil storage cabinets from the United States. 

The cabinets were provided by the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and were handed over by U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Pamela Tremont, on Thursday last week.

The cabinets are intended to help the museum organise, store, and protect its extensive fossil collections, which include some of Africa’s oldest dinosaur remains.

In her remarks at the event, Ambassador Tremont said the donation represents a shared commitment to preserving global heritage. She said:

These fossils are millions of years old. They predate Zimbabwe. They predate the United States. They are all of our histories.

Preserving them for research, science, and future generations is in all of our interests. I hope these cabinets are extremely useful in your important work.

The donation was facilitated by Dr. Moira FitzPatrick, Director of the Natural History Museum, and Dr. Chris Griffin, Assistant Professor of Geosciences at Princeton University, who previously conducted postdoctoral research at Yale.

Dr. Griffin was part of the international team that discovered Mbiresaurus raathi in 2017, the oldest known dinosaur fossil in Africa, dating back 230 million years.

The handover took place alongside the annual U.S. Fulbright Exchange lecture, which featured Dr. Jennifer Kyker of the University of Rochester. 

Dr. Kyker presented on the life and work of renowned Zimbabwean photographer Chicago Dzviti.

The event was part of a series of engagements by the U.S. Embassy at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair to promote American trade, investment, and educational partnerships in Zimbabwe.

More: CITE

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