2018 Mapes Collection Intern Blog

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...

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...

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...

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...