An exhibit of species recently extinct

Here they lie, 43 creatures and plants that are no more.

Assembled in cases at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University - in a library normally closed to the public - are birds stuffed with cotton, jars holding a snake and a bat, insects pinned to display boards.

Most natural history museum specimens are, of course, dead. But the demise of the ones in this new exhibit - "Mortal Remains: Animals That Have Perished from the Face of the Earth in Recent Times" - held greater implications. All are species that have gone extinct, and all in what scientists call "near time," since the Industrial Revolution.

Here is the Xerces blue, a butterfly last seen in 1941. Now, a conservation society is named for it.

Nearby is the Falkland Islands wolf, which Darwin saw on the voyage of the Beagle in 1833. By 1876, it was gone.

There's even a cast of the skull of a dodo, a flightless bird that may be the iconic extinction, given the oft-used phrase, "gone the way of the dodo."

Of course, there are several passenger pigeons. Sept. 1 was the 100th anniversary of the death of the last remaining passenger pigeon, Martha, in a Cincinnati Zoo. Her remains are now in the Smithsonian Institution.

Once so common that a passing flock darkened the sky, passenger pigeons were done in by overhunting and habitat loss - a familiar, sad theme for many extinct creatures.

But there are other ways. Seventy one species of Polynesian land snails were wiped out in a disastrous chain of events, starting with the introduction of an herbivorous African snail to the region that posed a danger to crops. Humans brought in a carnivorous snail to control it. The new snail found the native snails more to its liking, and only five of 76 native species remain. Some of the rest are displayed in "Mortal Remains."

Entomology curatorial assistant Greg Cowper had the unavoidably depressing task of curating the exhibit. But he experienced conflicting emotions.

"It's also wonderful to be a part of the museum that has all this wonderful material," he said. "It's really a gift."

Indeed, the exhibit is one of a series aimed at addressing a longstanding problem: The museum has 18 million specimens, one of the best natural history collections in the Americas, but limited space for showing them off.

So the staff moved glass cases into the library for short-term exhibits of treasures the public wouldn't otherwise see.

Although human activity was responsible for most of the extinctions, Cowper also made a point of including four species that were yanked from the brink of extinction by humans. While extinct species are designated by a skull and crossbones on their exhibit cards, these are marked with a checkmark inside a circle.

The star of this part of the show is Franklinia alatamaha, a tree discovered by John and William Bartram in 1765 along the Altamaha River in southern Georgia. William brought it back to Philadelphia in 1777 and named it after Benjamin Franklin. Although it hasn't been seen in the wild since 1803, cultivated specimens still grow at Bartram's Gardens and elsewhere.

To Nate Rice, the academy's ornithology collection manager, one of the lessons of the exhibit is how intertwined the creatures of the Earth are. "I like to think of life and the planet holistically, all these parts moving together," he said. "Once one of those is lost, the machine doesn't work as well."

Over the last half-billion years, the planet has seen five mass extinctions. Many researchers say we are entering the sixth, and potentially worst.

The "background" extinction rate - the natural turnover of Earth's creatures - is considered to be one to five species a year. Some scientists put the current rate at one to five a day - faster than science can discover and formally "describe" them.

Now, researchers are exploring the possibility of using the DNA of extinct species to eventually re-create them - opening vigorous ethical debates along with the scientific ones.

Not long ago, the museum gave researchers permission to sample the pelt and foot bones of the Falkland Islands wolf specimen.

They were able to extract DNA, which they sequenced and posted on GenBank, a national public database. Using the DNA, they were also able to determine close relatives of the wolf, which is a member of the dog family.

Perhaps the most melanchology specimen is the Tasmanian tiger. While others are preserved in bottles, pinned to backboards, or represented only by their skulls or skins, the tiger, which looks like a mid-sized dog, is a taxidermy specimen.

Its eyes glow and its leg muscles ripple, eerily lifelike. The species went extinct in 1936, when the last died in a zoo in Tasmania.

Cowper turned wistful as he looked at the small "garter belt" he purposely left around the animal's midsection to protect and support it.

"Not only are the animals in this exhibit extinct, but the specimens are imperiled, too," he said. "Museums are underfunded. We don't have the running-around money to get this fixed. . . . It's a sad thing."

"Mortal Remains" is open 1 to 4 p.m. weekdays through Oct. 15 at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy.; free with admission: $16; $14 for ages 3-12, students, and seniors. Information: 215-299-1000 or www.ansp.org.

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