How are Fossils cataloged and given ID's?

[E.Carbonensis]

How are fossils Given ID names?

 

All dinosaurs have a group, be it Ornithoscelida or Saurischia, Genus/Species names, and Common names. They all have Their own Collectors and field notes, too. But the most perplexing part is how they have individual ID's. How did FMNH PR 2081 get it's name? or MOR 555? i know the first initials, FMNH and MOR stand for the museum they are held in, but what about the numbers 2081 and 555? what about the PR in FMNH PR 2081? I am asking so when i research dinosaurs, say U. Ostrommaysorum, I can find the actual fossils instead of museum casts, full (yet fake) skeletons, and Find important field notes. if you know any other ways, please share. I am asking a wide audience, but I would prefer to direct it towards Paleontologists in The collection areas of museums, where the real fossils are stored. Thank you, and PLEASE HELP ME!!!!!!!

[ynot]

@Troodon

[E.Carbonensis]

11 minutes ago, ynot said:

@Troodon

You want me to ask him?

 

[Troodon]

Guess every museum has their own method to catalog their specimens, found this on the web.

http://collections.paleo.amnh.org/11/cataloging

 

Let's ask @jpc as what they do in his museum

[E.Carbonensis]

thank you very much!

i know i could've waited until college, but i want to be a (at the least, a junior) paleontologist now!

[ynot]

5 minutes ago, E.Carbonensis said:

You want me to ask him?

 

No - I flagged Him for You, so He would look at this thread.

 

PS Welcome to TFF!

[E.Carbonensis]

thanks! and thanks for the welcome, too.

the site link i was given was a tab i had open already, which is quite funny. i just am a bit confused on what it means. as a 14 year old, even above average cognitive abilities, i have a hard time thinking of examples of what they're saying.

[Nanosaurus]

From my experience working in museums, the numbers are usually assigned sequentially. Some museums start with specimen number 1, and move on from there. Others may do it bases on some variation of something like the year collected, where the specimen fits in sequentially with other specimens collected that year, and maybe similar factors. So for example, specimen 555 would represent the five hundred and fifty-fifth specimen cataloged into the museum paleontology collections.

[E.Carbonensis]

want to know something ironic? I live in michigan, and i love dinosaurs. it's kind of sad.

[E.Carbonensis]

oh, okay! thank you! i was just a bit confused. i tried that with a fragmentary fossil of an allosaurid, I believe, and i went 1 number down and got an avaceratops specimen, but i went another down, and there was nothing but confusing company names and memes. I guess the internet can just be.... horribly complex to the point where it seems illogical.

well, i'm going to bed. i'll review this later on. Good night (depending on where you live, just change it to your time schedule. for me, it was 9:58 PM when i posted this).

[Wrangellian]

1 hour ago, E.Carbonensis said:

want to know something ironic? I live in michigan, and i love dinosaurs. it's kind of sad.

Join the club - I love the Paleozoic and Precambrian, and I live on Vancouver Island.

Just have to learn to appreciate what you have locally! (it wasn't hard for me, lots of interesting things here) 

[jpc]

17 hours ago, E.Carbonensis said:

oh, okay! thank you! i was just a bit confused. i tried that with a fragmentary fossil of an allosaurid, I believe, and i went 1 number down and got an avaceratops specimen, but i went another down, and there was nothing but confusing company names and memes. I guess the internet can just be.... horribly complex to the point where it seems illogical.

well, i'm going to bed. i'll review this later on. Good night (depending on where you live, just change it to your time schedule. for me, it was 9:58 PM when i posted this).

I am not sure what you mean here: "...and i went 1 number down and got an avaceratops specimen, but i went another down..."

 

Basically others have answered the original question nicely.  The link troodon posted is good.  Feel free to ask me if you have questions about what is in that. 

 

Yes MOR 555 is the 555th specimen catalogued in the Museum of the Rockies collection.  Subnumber like "PR" in the Field Museum number often relate to subcollections, such as the Frick Collection at the AMNH.  Mr. Frick donated a HUGE collection of cenozoic mammals to the AMNH and so each of these has a number such as AMNH F1234. But, I have no idea what PR means.  (I had to look it up; that is Sue's specimen number).  It is not that Sue is part of any collection where PR would make sense.  If you want I could ask someone at the Field Museum. 

 

I do indeed work as a collections manager at the Tate Geological Museum in Casper, WY and I have a huge backlog of specimens that need cataloging, but I can tell you that the next specimen I catalog will be number "Tate v3831".  The v stands for Vertebrate.  The next Invertebrate I will be cataloging will have the number i1844.  Also sometimes I use a hyphen after the number to indicate separate pieces of the same specimen.  Our T rex is Tate v2222, but the scapula, for example is Tate v2222-28. (The 28th piece I cataloged from Lee Rex).  And yes, I waited to catalog it until I got to a cool number... 2222.  

 

Somewhere there is a list of what museums the letters represent.  

 

Also, in my own collection, I number things based on the locality they come from, say "JPC 1024-14" is the 14th fossil cataloged from my 1024th fossil site.  This allows me to immediately know which site a fossil is from... more or less.  Some museum do it this way, too.  Not the Field Museum nor the MOR. 

 

I hope this helps.  Also, just so you know, no museum will let you have a look at original field notes unless you have a really god reason to do so.  That will be a graduate school project for you in ten years, if all goes well. 

 

PS... don't worry about the time thing.  There are people here from all over the world and they are online at all times of the day, sometimes the Australians are even online tomorrow.    

[jpc]

Well, just for laughs, here is Tate v3831... an young hadrosaur jaw with no teeth from the Lance Fm of eastern Wyoming.  yes, I chose a nice specimen to show off.  v3832 will be a bone scrap.  

[E.Carbonensis]

when i said i went 1 number down, i meant specimen number. lets say it was WASD (example) 4323, and i went to WASD 4322 and got the avaceratops specimen, and then tried WASD 4321 and got nothing. i think i should just ask this. Does anyone know any specimen ID's for utahraptor fossils, or where i can find pictures of their fossils?

[jpc]

So you went down one specimen number in someone's online database?  Is that right? 

 

You should try to find the original description of Utahraptor.  Try a GoogleScholar search for that genus.  If the paper is available, you will get the specimen numbers for the type specimen, i.e., the specimen that was originally used to describe Utahraptor.  But there maybe other specimens since then, and you might have to simply contact the museums involved in collecting in the Cedar Mountain Formation.  

 

Here it is:

https://www.academia.edu/225747/A_large_dromaeosaurid_Theropoda_from_the_Lower_Cretaceous_of_Eastern_Utah

 

I suspect other specimens have been found since this was published (I htink I have seen some in the U of Utah museum in SLC), but this paper has the specimen number for the type specimen and associated pieces. 

Hope this helps.

 

[E.Carbonensis]

thanks.

 

[TNCollector]

I generally label sites this way:

State_Period_Number

Such as TN_K_1 for Tennessee, Cretaceous , site 1

 

I label specimens similarly, but place an S before the number, like TN_K_S1. Most databases used in museums and by individuals are sorted by site, like having a separate Excel page for each site, or in the case of PaleoArchiver (my app), a separate sqlite database table. Organizing specimens by site is the best way to do it in my opinion, but some people like to organize by time.

 

In short, the IDs/tags given to individual specimens usually represents the way they are organized in their database.