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The collections of the Library, Archive and Museum of the Charles Darwin Foundation contain a plethora of different documentary formats and materials: a rich and complex info-diversity, made up of large and small fragments of knowledge and memory.
Some of those fragments stand out: those having remarkable characteristics, or telling unique stories, or representing important moments or events. While they are part of a larger and wider story, they shine through, and that is why they have been chosen to be featured in this section.
Associated sections: Contents & pieces | Piece; Collections
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In 1938-9, accompanying her husband, chemist T.W.J. Taylor, on the "Lack-Venables Expedition" to the Galapagos Islands, British Rosamond Georgina Lloyd Taylor spent several months in the archipelago, especially in Santa Cruz, in the location that would later become Puerto Ayora. Her travel diary, handwritten in a small notebook, contains valuable information about life on the island at the beginning of the 20th century, and about the daily experiences of those first scientific expeditions.
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In 1973, British biologists Peter and Rosemary Grant began their scientific activities with Galapagos finches on Daphne Major islet. Their research would lead them to show, among other things, that natural selection can be seen within a single lifetime. One of the elements used in their field work was a series of colored plastic rings used to identify birds. A unique sample of those rings is preserved in the collections of the CDF Archive.
Text & picture: Edgardo Civallero (edgardo.civallero@fcdarwin.org.ec).
Publication date: 1 December 2021
Last update: 1 May 2022