A crowd buzzing with excitement sat in the Knight Law Center on Friday to listen to the story of one man who came to Oregon to preach but found himself digging in the dirt for fossils.
Director of the Condon Collection Dr. William Orr presented slides and told stories about different fossils and specimens housed in the University's Condon Collection.
The lecture kicked off the University's Museum of Natural and Cultural History annual archeology lecture series, "Uncommon Treasures: Stories from the University of Oregon Museum and Library Collection." Thomas Condon was Oregon's first geologist and the University's first natural history professor.
Condon was a "rapacious collector," who acquired large amounts of specimens and material, Orr said. Both Condon and his wife initially traveled to Oregon to preach Christianity.
"He was very religious, but had no problem with evolution. He saw it as God's way," Orr said.
According to Orr, 1,500-1,700 out of the 75,000 specimens in the Condon collection originally belonged to Condon. Condon's impact on the study of natural history in Oregon is apparent in the many buildings named after him: The primary visitors' center of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument is named in recognition of Condon, as is the University's Condon Hall, which houses the geology department's offices.
Condon's children sold his collection to the University after he died in 1907.
Currently, modern bones, used for comparative research, make up one tenth of the collection, and the rest is roughly half animals and half plants, Orr said.
The lecture touched on the vast variety in the collection and also discussed what paleontologists and geologists learn from such fossils.
Orr also showed slides of the "only fossil egg we know of in Oregon" and explained that fossils are able to stay intact for thousands of years because of Oregon's volcanic history. Orr's lecture ended with a reception in the Museum of Natural and Cultural History, where the audience was given a glance at the renovations in progress. The lecture series "gives people another opportunity to engage" in the museum, Education Coordinator Allison Kramer said.
It also "shows the extent of what we know of Oregon's past and showcases what the University does," C. Melvin Aikens, museum director, said.
The series is arranged in chronological order, beginning with the fossil collection, he said.
The next lecture, titled "Historical Treasures from the Museum of Natural and Cultural History," will be held Friday in Knight Law Center Room 175.
Haley Gordon is a freelance reporter for the Daily Emerald
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