British Museum (Natural History): Department of Zoology Osteology Section: Subject...

This series consists of the correspondence of successive heads of the Osteology Section of the Museum. Letters in the files relate to the presentation, loan or exchange of specimens, as well as enquiries from zoologists, archaeologists and the public. There are also files relating to W P Pycraft's unofficial activities as a popular writer and broadcaster (DF 234/29-35).

Pieces DF 234/1-28 represent the Section's chronological correspondence.

Series held at The Natural History Museum are catalogued more fully in its online catalogue (reference DF ZOO/234). Online descriptions of some individual records can also be viewed on Discovery, see DF 234.

Rearranged in recent years to make up a series of slim subject files.

Pieces DF 234/31-71 are the remnants of a much larger file series, part of which is now in the Anthropology Section archive:

DF 141

Topics

Museums and galleries

Although Osteology was not formally named as an independent section until 1962, it has its origins in the appointment of William Plane Pycraft (1868-1942) to look after osteological material in 1907. He had previously been assistant to E Ray Lankester at Oxford. When the Vertebrate Section was split up in 1920, Pycraft became a member of the Mammal Section, but with distinct duties in osteology. He was a popular speaker and broadcaster, and wrote The Courtship of Animals (1931), among many other books. He was succeeded by Francis Charles Fraser (1903-1978), a Scot who had studied zoology at Glasgow University, and who specialised in the Cetacea. Responsibility for human osteology passed to Kenneth Oakley when the Anthropology Section was set up in 1953.