The Field Museum's hallmark—the fighting African elephants in Stanley Field Hall—symbolizes the richness of its natural history collections from Africa. Revolutionizing the art of taxidermy around the turn of the century, Carl Akeley collected and mounted many African specimens, including these Kenyan elephants, for exhibition and education at the Museum. Today, field work by Museum staff and collaborating scientists continues to build the collections with skins, skeletons, fossils, herbarium mounts, specimens preserved in fluid, even collections of frozen tissue. These wide-ranging records of natural diversity allow us to decipher evolutionary and ecological relationships in the past and present. Electronic catalogs of data improve access.

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