Cabinet of Natural History Collections

Marine Animals

Among the various zoological collections kept at the Museum of the Science and Technology Foundation, there is a series of marine animals collected in the second half of the nineteenth century in the Neapolitan Gulf and prepared at the Zoological Station of Naples.

The Zoological Station of Naples was founded in 1870 by Anton Dohrn (1840-1909) with the aim of creating an evolutionary research center in marine biology and a place where scientists of all nationalities could conduct studies and share their knowledge. Here worked Salvatore Lo Bianco (1860-1910), who became famous for the skill with which he managed to preserve the delicate forms of marine invertebrates in alcohol. Its products became highly coveted and were purchased by museums, institutes and schools around the world. Even the Tuscan Technical Institute managed, in 1902, to acquire a collection consisting of 276 specimens of rare beauty and today so well preserved that they still document the effectiveness of the preparation techniques used by him. Preserved in liquid, the collection mainly includes invertebrate animals and represents a testimony of the species living at the time in this marine area of ​​undoubted environmental value.

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