Virtual Yale

Upon seeing an adorable Koala sitting on an eucalyptus branch in Australia, few would expect the beloved marsupial to emit a booming bellow to alert potential mates or rivals of its presence. But this powerful roar is just one of koalas’ many surprises, which delight and astonish in Australian biologist Danielle Clode’s new book, “Koala: A Life in the Trees.” Clode explores the enigmatic koala’s 24 million years-long saga of evolutionary adaptations, conservation triumphs, and endangerment catastrophes, and the prospects for their future following the 2019 bushfires that devastated Australia’s koala populations.

Listen to this conversation with Clode about the ancient ancestors, ecology, evolving relationship with humans, and uncertain fate of Australia’s bellowing marsupial here.

This exhibition presents many of the most historically significant manuscript maps from the late medieval and early modern period from the Beinecke Library’s vast collection of maps. It is focused on portolan charts - large, colorful charts that showed the shoreline of the Mediterranean, and were used by sailors to navigate from port to port. These maps were crucial to the expansion of European trade in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Yale University Library has one of the most significant map collections of this period and owns some unique items not found in any other collection. When the holdings previously in the Map Room in Sterling Memorial Library were consolidated with Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library collections in 2018, it formed the largest single repository of portolan maps in North America.  

Explore the collection here