Support for Care and Use of the Systematic Collection of Mazon Creek Fossil Animals and Plants

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The Mazon Creek area of northeastern Illinois yields one of the most important soft-bodied invertebrate and plant biotas known from the Late Paleozoic. Middle Pennsylvanian terrestrial, freshwater and marine organisms from this region are both diverse and abundant. The Field Museum of Natural History houses the largest and most significant collection of fossils from Mazon Creek, but almost half of its 94,000 specimens are not yet fully available to the scientific community. This project will provide support for equipment and temporary personnel to assist the Museum in (1) reducing a backlog of 43,000 unsorted, unculled and uncatalogued specimens; (2) rearranging the Mazon Creek holdings to accommodate the newly sorted material; (3) cataloging the entire Mazon Creek collection using computerized collection management techniques; and (4) publishing a catalogue of type, figured and referred specimens from the Mazon Creek area. Completion of the project will facilitate more efficient collection management, enhance awareness of the extensive Field Museum holdings, and result in a unique collection of research-quality specimens that will be more accessible and significantly more useful for future research.