0
Egg From Darwin Voyage Comes to Light
Naturalist signed—and cracked—relic from Beagle excursion
By Rob Quinn
|
Posted Apr 10, 09 9:46 AM CDT
|
Share
(Newser)
–
The only egg known to have survived from Charles Darwin's round-the-world voyage on the Beagle has surfaced in Cambridge University's zoology museum, the BBC reports. A volunteer sorting through the museum's vast egg collection found the egg—from an ostrich-like bird in Uruguay—and realized it bore the naturalist's signature.
A museum director searched the archives and found 19th-century correspondence noting that Darwin's son had given the egg to the museum, and that the naturalist himself had broken it after the voyage by putting it in a too-small box. "To have rediscovered a Beagle specimen in the 200th year of Darwin's birth is special enough, but to have evidence that Darwin himself broke it is a wonderful twist," he said.