At The Time In 1972,

it was like no other zoo in the world,

photographs © Laure Andrillon, it was the worlds first frozen zoo, the zoo was established at the San Diego Zoo by pathologist Kurt Benirschke in 1972, at the time there was no technology available to make use of the collection, but Benirschke believed such technology would be developed in the future,

the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research currently stores a collection of 8,400 samples from over 800 species and subspecies, the San Diego Zoo Conservation Research has acted as a forbearer to similar projects at other zoos in the United States and Europe. However, there are still less than a dozen frozen zoos worldwide. The Frozen Ark is a frozen zoo established in 2004 and jointly managed by the Zoological Society of London, the London Natural History Museum, and the University of Nottingham, what amazing foresight Kurt Benirschke must have had saving so many species, even though there was no current technology to use the samples he was freezing.