The Parade of Skeletons
Display arranged 1898
Push through the doors and you face an army of skeletons advancing toward you down an eighty metre hall. At the front, one arm raised as if giving the order to march, is a flayed human figure, a bronze écorché showing every muscle. Behind him come horses, giraffes, elephants, hippos, camels, big cats, apes and hundreds of smaller animals, all stripped to the bone and set on wooden plinths, with whales and dolphins hanging above. This is the comparative anatomy gallery as it was arranged for the opening in 1898, and it has barely changed since.
The idea behind it belongs to Georges Cuvier, the founder of comparative anatomy, who worked in this garden at the start of the nineteenth century. Cuvier believed that every part of an animal's skeleton was shaped by the way it lived, so that a single bone could tell you the whole creature. Walk along the rows and test the idea. Compare the hand of the gorilla with the flipper of the seal and the wing of the bat; the same bones are there in each, stretched, shortened or fused. Look at the elephant's skull, hollowed with air spaces to keep it light, and the tiny skeletons of hummingbirds in the cases along the walls.
The iron framed building by Ferdinand Dutert, architect of the Galerie des Machines at the 1889 World's Fair, is itself a monument, with sculpted animals on the facade and wrought iron railings inside. Nothing here is interactive and there are few screens, which is exactly why people love it. It feels like stepping into the mind of a nineteenth century scientist, and the light through the tall windows on a clear morning makes the bones glow.
Did You Know? The gallery is famous among film makers and photographers, and the parade of skeletons has appeared in music videos and fashion shoots because nothing else looks like it.
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