How long does it take to identify a fossil?

[PaleoRon]

I got a surprise at the end of August when I received notice from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History regarding them returning one of my fossils. Part of my surprise was that I have been dealing almost exclusively with the Calvert Marine Museum (the CMM) in Maryland for several years. Occasionally some of my specimens are sent to the Smithsonian from the CMM, but they are returned back to the CMM. The surprise was compounded when the accompanying letter stated it was an item I had sent in for identification. It was a section of bone that I found in the vicinity of Brownie’s Beach in Calvert County, Maryland. Most of the fossil material found there comes out of “Zone 10” of the Calvert Formation. The Calvert Formation is Lower Middle Miocene in age.

          The piece of bone was identified as part of a land mammal ischium. In Florida, with its wealth of terrestrial fossils, this would hardly be worth mentioning. In the Maryland Miocene deposits, terrestrial material is very rare. I can attest that it is a fossil that I found, but I do not remember sending it in for identification. I was starting to wonder if my memory was developing gaps in the paleontology section.

          The mystery was solved when I saw the acceptance date for the fossil. The Smithsonian received the specimen on April 14^th, 1991 and it was returned to me on October 7^th, 2017.

I do not claim to be a mathematician, but I am quite proficient at basic math. The reason I did not remember submitting this particular specimen to the Smithsonian is that it was sent twenty six and a half years ago.

 

I will be donating it to the Calvert Marine Museum on my next visit.

                                                                                

                                                                                                            The Specimen

[ynot]

Ya gotta wonder why.

Nice find, sorry it took so long to find out about it.

[Ludwigia]

The Smithsonian is akin to an elephant. Good thing it has a memory like one as well. 11 years ago I donated a crocodile jaw to a palaeontologist who has moved house 3 times since then and as far as I know it's still sitting in a drawer until she finally gets around to writing a paper on her pet subject. Still got a long way to go to break your record, though.

[LordTrilobite]

I have some some fossils that have taken a while to ID, some years even. But none as long as your fossil.

 

Funny how ID can sometimes take just five minutes, and other times it can take decades.

[Troodon]

Like aged bourbon just takes time to get the full enjoyment.  Now what else is in those halls that you cannot remember...nice story 

[Ptychodus04]

It took 20 years for it to sit in a drawer until some poor intern who has been assigned to straighten out the unknown bits to find it. Then it took around 5 minutes for one of the paleontists to identify. It took the next 6 years for them to get around to mailing it to you. 

[aerogrower]

Cool story! Congrats on the find.

[Plantguy]

Yep that is a tad bit long. congrats on the find! Regards, Chris 

[Plantguy]

Hey Ron, An interesting bit of related info/followup with some crazy sized numbers about the Smithsonian which I saw today....

 

So on page 100 of the Nov 2017 Smithsonian Magazine under "Ask Smithsonian":

 

"How many unexamined fossils does the National Museum of Natural History have---that is, about how many new discoveries are waiting to be made?"

 

"Of the 41 million fossil items in the museum's paleobiology collection, every one was examined as it was sorted into one of 10,000 cases. But that doesn't mean there are no potential discoveries to come, says Kathy Hollis, manager of the National Fossil Collection. This is among the world's largest fossil collections, and only about 2 percent of the items have been the subject of published research. It already serves as a reference collection for hundreds of researchers annually, and that number will rise as Hollis' team digitizes the fossils. The number of potential discoveries is incalculable."

 

Regards, Chris 

 

 

[PaleoRon]

Wow.