WARD'S CASTS
Have you met Shelley the Glyptodon and Terry the Deinotherium, or the monsterous Mosasaur in Olin Memorial Library? They are valuable, historical Ward’s Casts. With the Wesleyan Museum’s opening in 1871, Orange Judd purchase 900 fossil casts from the Ward Establishment’s “Catalogue of Casts and Fossils”. Today, one-third of that collection remains, and plays and important role in teaching and research into the History of Science in the United States.
These important historical fossil casts were made for sale in the United States by Professor Henry A. Ward, based in Rochester, New York, in reaction to most important specimens for study being housed in European institutions and not available for scholars in the United States. They have graced the halls of world-class institutions such as the Smithsonian, the American Museum of Natural History and the Field Museum for over a century.
Fossil casts are not fakes. They are accurate replicas made using contemporaneous state-of-the-art duplication techniques from actual specimens, retaining fine details necessary for scientific research.
A spread from Henry A. Ward’s catalogue of fossil casts from the 1800s showing two of the Plesiosaur specimens now on display on Level 3 of Exley.
