RyanNREMTP Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/canada/manitoba/story/1.2725575 All I can say is wow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fossilized6s Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 Ha, pretty cool and unfortunate at the same time. Don't these "museums" take inventory? It seems a new exciting rerediscovery happens annually now........ ~Charlie~ "There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why.....i dream of things that never were, and ask why not?" ~RFK ->Get your Mosasaur print ->How to spot a fake Trilobite ->How to identify a CONCRETION from a DINOSAUR EGG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auspex Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 It can take a while for a researcher with the interest and qualifications to recognize the significance of stored specimens; this is where the role of a museum as a repository pays off "There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant “Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley >Paleontology is an evolving science. >May your wonders never cease! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diplotomodon Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 Wow - just goes to show that it's worth taking a look and browsing through storage once in a while. I have no doubt that more well-preserved fossil specimens such as this one will be rediscovered in the basements of museum collections for a long time to come yet. What a wonderful menagerie! Who would believe that such as register lay buried in the strata? To open the leaves, to unroll the papyrus, has been an intensely interesting though difficult work, having all the excitement and marvelous development of a romance. And yet the volume is only partly read. Many a new page I fancy will yet be opened. -- Edward Hitchcock, 1858 Formerly known on the forum as Crimsonraptor @Diplotomodon on Twitter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrangellian Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 Repositories, yes, but do museums not keep some sort of list of what they hold? They just stick stuff in a drawer/basement and it is forgotten until someone comes along and looks at it again? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auspex Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 Repositories, yes, but do museums not keep some sort of list of what they hold? They just stick stuff in a drawer/basement and it is forgotten until someone comes along and looks at it again? Yes, of course, but the information they archive may be incomplete or in error, since many specimens have yet to be really studied. "There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant “Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley >Paleontology is an evolving science. >May your wonders never cease! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrangellian Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 Yes, of course, but the information they archive may be incomplete or in error, since many specimens have yet to be really studied. Could they not at least have entries like "unidentified shark material" or "unidentified echinoderm" so that the specialists know where to look for new material to study? It seems the specimen would have been 'studied' at least to that point in order to be put in the museum in the first place...? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auspex Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 Could they not at least have entries like "unidentified shark material" or "unidentified echinoderm" so that the specialists know where to look for new material to study? It seems the specimen would have been 'studied' at least to that point in order to be put in the museum in the first place...? What makes you think they don't? "There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant “Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley >Paleontology is an evolving science. >May your wonders never cease! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrangellian Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 What makes you think they don't? I keep hearing these stories about things that were discovered in museum basements that they didn't realize were there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auspex Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 Since there just isn't any feasible way to have a 'central catalog' of every fossil stored in every museum in the world, mining the collections for research specimens is a needle-in-a-haystack endeavor. Re-discoveries will continue to be made, many of them largely due to serendipity. "There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant “Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley >Paleontology is an evolving science. >May your wonders never cease! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanNREMTP Posted August 13, 2014 Author Share Posted August 13, 2014 Doesn't gaining a collection before the age of computers play into it? Or each museum having a different system of entering their stuff into a database? I've read stories of the larger museums having millions and millions of artifacts and I can imagine that being hard to keep up with all of that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrangellian Posted August 15, 2014 Share Posted August 15, 2014 Since there just isn't any feasible way to have a 'central catalog' of every fossil stored in every museum in the world, mining the collections for research specimens is a needle-in-a-haystack endeavor. Re-discoveries will continue to be made, many of them largely due to serendipity. I don't mean there should be a central repository for every museum in the world though I guess that would make things easy but if each museum kept a list of all their holdings whether they were ID'd or not, then it should be easy for researchers to consult them to see if they have anything worth studying. I have always assumed it was routine to put a number on something as soon as it is received and then a record made of it. Doesn't gaining a collection before the age of computers play into it? Or each museum having a different system of entering their stuff into a database? I've read stories of the larger museums having millions and millions of artifacts and I can imagine that being hard to keep up with all of that. I keep a handwritten list of everything in my collection (though will admit it's not fully up to date yet, but that's mainly due to storage issues.. one they are solved it will be easy to put a number on everything and enter it into the book). A paper copy is better than none at all.. though again I will agree if it's not on computer it's not as easy for a researcher to do a search esp' if there are millions of items.. is that the main issue here? But if a museum doesn't have a complete catalog of their holdings, how do they know if something has been stolen form them? Sure it might be some time before they notice it's missing, if their collection is huge and the stolen item was not looked at often, but if it's not catalogued then they will never know! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auspex Posted August 15, 2014 Share Posted August 15, 2014 There is stuff still in jackets from the 1890s; they have collection numbers, and what information they have on them is recorded. BUT, as they have not yet been studied, the recorded information can be incomplete or inaccurate. Heck, a couple of the known Archaeopteryx specimens were 'discovered' in museum collections, misidentified! The 'discoveries' made in old collections that make such splashy headlines are due to (1) a museum keeping them safe for years, and (2) serendipity. "There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant “Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley >Paleontology is an evolving science. >May your wonders never cease! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FossilDAWG Posted August 15, 2014 Share Posted August 15, 2014 The Canadian Fossil Discovery Center is a museum established to collect (salvage, really) fossils from the Cretaceous rocks exposed mainly in old bentonite mines near Morden, Manitoba. The bentonite (volcanic ash) layers tend to absorb water and swell, splintering the overlying shale. Also, many of the fossils are heavily encrusted in selenite crystals. This creates several problems: the fossils are very very fragile, requiring extensive plaster jacketing, they must be collected quickly as they are exposed as even a single winter can reduce them to unrecognizable shards, and they require extensive cleaning to remove the encrusting selenite before the full significance of the specimen can be determined. Fossils are exposed, and have to be collected, faster than they can be prepped, especially considering that the museum relies heavily on volunteer labor (or labour, as it is in Canada). This means that, apart from obvious specimens such as very large mosasaurs, a lot of material is collected, given a preliminary identification, and stored until the prep staff can get to them. Shark material is not uncommon, and judging from the photo in the linked article the completeness of this particular specimen may not have been apparent until it was prepped. So Eric, it would seem the choices would be: 1. Collect when you can, store the specimens, and prep and study them when you have the resources (i.e. the way it works now), or 2. Only collect what you can prep right now, leaving the rest to be destroyed by erosion, or 3. Substantially increase local taxes to hire dozens of skilled preparators, and buy enough microjacks etc so dozens of specimens can be worked on simultaneously. To me, it seems #1 is the most practical/prudent under the circumstances. Don Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tmaier Posted August 15, 2014 Share Posted August 15, 2014 There is a movement to get all the old stuff into a modern databases, but not all databases are compatable with each other. It's better than the old paper records, which also had a diversity of formats (and sometimes scribbly handwriting). Here's Univ. Florida's attempt to computer database their massive collection of items they have acquired over the past 100+ years. http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/collections/databases/ It costs a lot to do this, so money shortage is an issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paleoflor Posted August 15, 2014 Share Posted August 15, 2014 (...)Heck, a couple of the known Archaeopteryx specimens were 'discovered' in museum collections, misidentified! (...) Guilty! This specimen resides in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem, The Netherlands. Dutch sign roughly states (freely translated): In 1970, Dr. John Ostrom, an American scientist, discovered that the fossil described by Hermann von Meyer as Pterodactilys crassipes (in 1858) is in fact the fourth known specimen of Archaeopteryx. Consequently, the Teylers Museum specimen is the earliest collected (found in 1855) example of this animal. Searching for green in the dark grey. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrangellian Posted August 18, 2014 Share Posted August 18, 2014 The Canadian Fossil Discovery Center is a museum established to collect (salvage, really) fossils ... So Eric, it would seem the choices would be: 1. Collect when you can, store the specimens, and prep and study them when you have the resources (i.e. the way it works now), or... OK that may be a valid point for that outfit but does this sort of situation apply to the other cases where something has been discovered in a back room drawer that was collected years ago? Are all these a combination of the above points (messy handwriting, etc), or are museums habitually collecting/salvaging stuff faster than they can document them? And if so, where does it end - when the museum has to start getting rid of stuff or refusing new stuff, or collectors slow down on donating stuff because of the increasing restrictions on their ability to collect fossils in the first place? Just wondering... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auspex Posted August 18, 2014 Share Posted August 18, 2014 A lot of the initial documentation is going to be rudimentary, unless there is a qualified researcher standind ready to take it on immediately. Collected specimens only become studied specimens when the right person comes looking, and initial identifications (especially from way back when) can be pretty sketchy or flat out wrong. "There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant “Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley >Paleontology is an evolving science. >May your wonders never cease! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanNREMTP Posted August 18, 2014 Author Share Posted August 18, 2014 Case in point the thread I just started in this section about a worm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpc Posted August 18, 2014 Share Posted August 18, 2014 As a professional museum guy I have to chime in... yes, we all have a lot of fossils that we can't identify. I consider myself somewhat well versed in White River and Lance Fm fossils, and slightly less so in Eocene mammals and reptiles, yet most of my time is spent in doing other things than actually identifying these things to, say, the species level, even though it is more my responsibility than anyone else's here. (such as outreach like this). Occasionally we get an actual expert on some of these things and they might have time to look through our small collection to ID things. It is on these occasions that interesting discoveries might be made. FossilDawg's three scenarios paints a very realistic portrait of The Way It Is in the world of museums. OK... back to cataloging Eocene bones.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrangellian Posted August 18, 2014 Share Posted August 18, 2014 So it's mainly a problem of IDing things, and most museums don't have the problem of more things coming in than they can handle (ie. add to 'the list' even if the ID is uncertain or wrong)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tmaier Posted August 19, 2014 Share Posted August 19, 2014 If an ID is uncertain, you should put a (?) by it, but most people are too embarrassed to do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auspex Posted August 19, 2014 Share Posted August 19, 2014 Until they run out of room to do so, a museum's raison d'être is to securely store objects in perpetuity. Even if it means that they cannot immediately study them, the specimens will be there when someone can (which is why we hear about amazing re-discoveries). The alternative is to stop taking in new things until they're caught up. "There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant “Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley >Paleontology is an evolving science. >May your wonders never cease! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarleysGh0st Posted August 19, 2014 Share Posted August 19, 2014 FossilDawg's three scenarios paints a very realistic portrait of The Way It Is in the world of museums. As a collections volunteer, I'll second that. Except that, as a non-governmental non-profit institution, raising taxes to pay for it isn't really an option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tmaier Posted August 19, 2014 Share Posted August 19, 2014 Paleontology is the poor step child of the sciences. I wonder what the percentage of NSF money goes towards that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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