Wagner Free Institute of Science

This guide to the Wagner Free Institute of Science in Philadelphia begins with an 1886 dig on a Florida riverbank, where a team funded by this Philadelphia museum unearthed a skull unlike anything found before on the continent. It traces the story back to William Wagner, a shipping agent who spent decades collecting rocks, shells, and bones on his travels and eventually turned his farmhouse lectures into a free public institute. You'll hear how the anatomist Joseph Leidy took over after Wagner's death in 1885 and rearranged the entire hall by evolutionary order. Walk the cabinets in that same sequence, from simple creatures near the door toward geologic time.