Rinay is a malacological

museum of natural history A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more. ...

Baku Baku (, ; az, Bakı ) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world a ...

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of th ...

. It is also the first

private museum A private museum is a collection, usually on a very limited topic and operated by individual enthusiasts, collectors, clubs or companies. Overview Unlike a public or governmental museum, a scientific monitoring and systematic documentation is n ...

in the country. The museum exhibits approximately 5,000

clam Clam is a common name for several kinds of bivalve molluscs. The word is often applied only to those that are edible and live as infauna, spending most of their lives halfway buried in the sand of the seafloor or riverbeds. Clams have two she ...

shells (the shells of

bivalve Bivalvia (), in previous centuries referred to as the Lamellibranchiata and Pelecypoda, is a class of marine and freshwater molluscs that have laterally compressed bodies enclosed by a shell consisting of two hinged parts. As a group, bival ...

molluscs) from 86

genera Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclat ...

worldwide.''Yol'' magazine, N4 (8), 2007, pp. 40, 44 The museum also displays hundreds of fossil clam shells. Some of these were obtained by exchange from the

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and

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

paleontological Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (geology), epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes t ...

university museums. The basis for the museum collection was laid down in the early 1930s by Sadykh Karayev, an Honored Engineer and Honored Inventor of the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

. Karayev's clam shell collection was preserved by his wife Prof. Jeyran Ibadova, and was transferred from Rinay to the History Museum of Azerbaijan in June 2007. Sadykh Karayev's son Tofik Karayev continued the effort to improve his father's collection. T. Karayev previously worked at the Geological Institute of the

Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan SSR Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS) ( az, Azərbaycan Milli Elmlər Akademiyası (AMEA)), located in Baku, is the main state research organization and the primary body that conducts research and coordinates activities in the fields of ...

. He systematized the collection and conducted a taxonomic revision of modern molluscs. In 1989, the museum received official status.

References

External links

Overview (Azerbaijan National Committee of International Council of Museums)
1989 establishments in Azerbaijan Museums established in 1989 Museums in Baku Science museums in Azerbaijan Shell museums Fossil museums Former private collections Clams {{Azerbaijan-museum-stub