Posts

Week 8: Closing Statement

Our internship has officially come to a close. Our last week was productive, emotional, and a satisfying end to a busy summer. We started sharing cabinets as our workload dwindled, and once the final specimen was rehoused, catalogued, and entered in the database, we began the tedious process of cutting labels for every tray that was completed this summer. Since we were already master paper cutters by this point, we finished the task a bit more quickly than we expected. After all the labels were cut, we assigned them to their trays, sharing ladders and cabinets and stacks of labels. On Friday, we all said goodbye, knowing that we will see each other again later this year for the GSA conference at which we will present our poster. It was, of course, bittersweet, knowing that we are all moving on to different states, different jobs, different podcasts, perhaps. But I, as well as the other interns, I'm sure, am so grateful to have spent my summer at the most wonderful museum on earth...
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Week 7!  We are nearing the final stretch! In our penultimate week at the museum we inched ever closer to being finished curating our cabinets. For the past few weeks, many of us have been focusing on type specimens, and all of us have come across some "good stuff" in our drawers! This week we had the pleasure of visiting the Invertebrate Zoology collection. This collection houses all specimens from the previously separated Entomology, Terrestrial Arthropod, and Marine Invertebrate departments. This department is therefore characterized by its great taxonomic diversity. For this tour we mainly focused on insects, and got to see some super charismatic members of the collection - including longhorn beetles, walking sticks, wasps, and a variety of butterflies and moths! Some large and charismatic walking sticks, beetles, butterflies and hoppers.  This drawer is not curated for study, but is awesome nonetheless!  A snapshot of the Hymenoptera collectio...
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Week 6

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This was a very productive week! We are learning how to troubleshoot data entry and rehousing as we work our way through cabinets that have unique obstacles. At this point in the internship, most of us have worked with specimens that are cited in journals. Such specimens are stored in drawer that contain a copy of the publication. When we come across a specimen that is noted in the publication, we highlight the specimen number and note the new AMNH catalog number that we have given it. When databasing these specimens, we record the pagination, or the exact location in the journal where the specimen was mentioned. It’s neat to see some examples of how this collection has been used for research. New catalog numbers are noted in this publication. Abby came across this nautilus that was collected by Alexander Bickmore, who eventually became the first president of AMNH.  This week we had a great tour of the ornithology department. Our tour guide started off by givin...
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Week 5

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Week 5. It is hard to believe we are already this far into the internship! This week some of us took a break from fossils and switched over to working with recent specimens, a many of which happen to be Nautilus shells. Although Royal Mapes focused the majority of his collecting on fossil cephalopods of the carboniferous, he also collected a significant amount of recent material from the Indo-Pacific. Having specimens from both the past and present allows for comparisons to see what evolutionary changes have occurred over time.  Drawer filled with Nautilus Nautiloids are cephalopods native to the Indo-Pacific that have changed very little over the past millions of years. They are often referred to as ‘living fossils.’ They bear a close resemblance to the extinct cephalopods, ammonites.  Live nautilus (source: calphotos.berkeley.edu) Comparison of nautilus and ammonites, with time periods (source: The Earth Through Time, Harold L. Levin) Wha...
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Week 4

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This week we continued working on type specimens and learning to navigate the difficulties these specimens bring when it comes to digitizing them. We are realizing that this process requires much more time than we originally anticipated, so the work flow has slowed down. A highlight from the Mapes Collection that was observed this week, thanks to Mariah Slovacek, the invertebrate preparator, we were shown a recent albino Nautiloidea, which allowed us to take time and ask her questions about the specimen and expand our knowledge on nautiloid biology. That being said, this week was also a short week due to the 4 th of July. We were released early on Tuesday, which allowed us to take an impromptu tour of the “Big Bone Room,” guided by Carl Mehling.     Can you see the large duckbill footprint? This is an image of a duckbill skin impression that originates from the spinal section, where you can see visible puncture marks from the caudal vertebrae (assumed to h...
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Week Three: Workin' Hard

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Our third week at the museum has been an adventure! We are gradually picking up speed and becoming more familiar with the motions involved in rehousing, cataloguing, and databasing these incredible specimens. Every fossil is unique, and we have enjoyed this opportunity to inspect (in detail, over and over again) and admire them. Additionally, we have finally mastered the art of multitasking: we now handle the Mapes collection to the sweet sounds of the "My Favorite Murder" podcast, as well as NPR when that gets a little hard to handle (and music when the news is too hard to handle). On Wednesday, we got an AWESOME tour of Exhibits by Dina Langis (thanks again Dina, it was amazing!!) and learned about the backstage work needed to create our favorite exhibits. We had the honor of being clued in to some top-secret future exhibit plans (if I told you, I'd have to kill you, and I didn't make that rule, I'm just an intern).   The only snuffleupagus in the museum...
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Throughout our second week, we continued on in our pursuit to rehouse, catalog, and database our specimens from the Roy Mapes Collection! Though we're becoming more comfortable with our work, that doesn't mean any less questions for Bushra! However, new drawers means new fossils -and many of us are finding some beautiful specimens! A sand dollar (Echinodermata) from the Cenozoic Some funky corals (Anthozoa) This week we had the pleasure of visiting the Herpetology Collection, complete with a tour courtesy of David Kirizian. We were amazed by the sheer number of specimens they house (almost 380,000!) and by the size of some of some of these specimens (like the Galapagos Tortoises featured below). Many of the specimens are used for ongoing research, meaning that scientists from many different institutions and countries come to study this collection.  Galapagos tortoises gifted to the collection Specimens preserved in Ethanol Some Crocodilian sk...
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