He was concurrently the first curator of fish at the American Museum of Natural History and the founding curator of the arms and armor department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
He was also the first curator of fish at the Museum of Natural History (where his specialties included placoderms, or armored fish), and he wrote or collaborated on some 175 books and scientific papers, including a three-volume "Bibliography of Fishes".
"We've never seen an animal that was ready to mate that was smaller than 35 pounds," Tim Carpenter, the aquarium's curator of fish and invertebrates, explained to CrossCut.com.
At one of these gatherings, she met Dr. Giles W. Mead, the curator of fishes at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology.
A zoologist by training, Dean was for a time simultaneously a full professor at Columbia University, Curator of Fishes at the American Museum of Natural History, and Curator of Arms and Armor at the Metropolitan Museum.
"I've dived around the globe," said Gerald R. Allen, an ichthyologist who was curator of fishes at the Western Australian Museum for 25 years, "and there is absolutely nothing else that compares".
Dr. Melanie Stiassny, curator of fishes at the American Museum of Natural History, calls the seven extant species "the last few tips of an evolutionary tree that reaches to the Cretaceous," which makes them rough contemporaries with the stegosaurus.
Dr. Mead used to work for the government's Fish and Wildlife service, in Washington, but not long ago became curator of fishes at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology (a bit of swimming against the current that makes him the equal of the Chinook salmon).
Jonathan Armbruster, biological sciences professor and curator of fishes for the Auburn University Museum of Natural History, said he was trying to name the fish when his colleague, arachnologist Chris Hamilton, said it looked a little familiar.
Miss Ida Mellen, who used to look after the ailing fish isn't there anymore, her successor is Mr. Christopher Coates, curator of tropical fish.
The New Yorker, August 24 , 1935P. 13 Miss Ida Mellen, who used to look after the ailing fish isn't there anymore, her successor is Mr. Christopher Coates, curator of tropical fish.
