Collecting expedition sponsoredIn 1801, the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, sponsored the first collecting expedition under the auspices of an American scientific society, when a loan of $500 was provided to Charles Willson Peale. He operated a museum in Philadelphia, and he had just returned from New York State with a partial skeleton of a mastodon found by a farmer digging marl from a bog. Peale went back to the collection site and made a systematic search for more bones. The excavation was drained by a huge, man-powered water wheel. Long, slender, iron rods were used to probe the soil for solid objects under the ground. Peale exhibited the complete mastodon skeleton at his museum, where it caused a sensation.« |
