HISTORY OF THE ZOOLOGICAL MUSEUM

The Zoological Museum is an independent unit of the Department of Zoology of Lviv National University (LNU). The History of Museum dating back from 1823, since the Dr Frans Divald got some doublets of the emperors' collections from Vienna for the cabinet of natural history and the department of Zoology.

In 1884, when Benedykt Dybowski got a job in Lviv University, on the base of natural history cabinet Zoological Museum was created. Except the cabinet's funds there were rich collections of B. Dybowski from Baikal, Kamchatka peninsula, the East Siberia, the South of Russia and the Caspian Sea in the museum.

Soon the museum grew rich with clamshells and other invertebrate animals from the Red and the Adriatic Seas, collected by the expedition of Monaco Prince, by Vatska's, Uljanovski's, Petruski's, Grokhmalitski's, Vertzhynski's and other's collections.

In 1904 the museum received a unique exhibit - a skeleton of the sea (Steller's) cow Hydrodamalis gigas (Rhytina stelleri), which was made as a present for Dybowski by inhabitants of Bering's island.

In 1938 the professor Jan Girschler brought African animals' collection from an expedition to Liberia. They were placed in the museum halls.

In 1956 due to efforts of the professor Strautman captain of a whaling flotilla "Slava" made as present the skeleton of sperm whale for the museum. In the period of 1960-1964 years museum was filled up by the collections of insects and some mammals from Kazakhstan. In 1975 Ivan Franko University for the Museum acquired a large collection of butterflies from Japan, Far East, the Caucasus, the Pamirs and Australia.

The Museum collection continues to be filled up by the new animal samples which are gathered during the scientific expeditions and educational practice by the department and the museum workers.

At the present in five museum halls over 40 thousand exhibits a saved among which about six thousands vertebral and over 35 thousand invertebrate animals. Among museum collections world fauna is presented, on this list there are also a lot of rare and vanishing animal species.

The scientific investigations are made by museum collaborators, especially the migration watching and orientation of birds (the direction preferences of birds during the migration), seeing of reserved areas. They received some information about wintering areas and flight ways of birds from Portugal, France, Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary and Egypt.

With a decision of the Scientific Council of the biological faculty of Ivan Franko National University in Lviv from October, 18, 2000 Zoological Museum was named after the prominent scientist, a Professor Benedykt Dybowski.