Support for the Field Museum Fossil Mammal Collection: A New Collection Facility

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9631431 Flynn The fossil mammal collections at the Field Museum of Natural History is an imortant national and international systematic and paleontological resource for research and education. It comprises more than 60,000 catalogued specimens. Of these, 20,000 have been collected since 1981, which means that the data associated with them is exceptionally complete. This rate of growth, however, has rendered the collection very overcrowded, which is a danger to the specimens; in addition, for some years it has not been possible to house all of the fossil mammal specimens in contiguous cases. The Field Museum recently constructed a new space to house certain of its collections. This project will install compactors in a portion of the new space, fill these with new cases, and move the entire fossil mammal collection into one contiguous section of cases. Such a move will enhance curation and conservation of the specimens, make the collection much more accessible for use in education and research, and enable more efficient collection management. This $1.1 million project is funded in partnership between the Research Collections in Systematics & Ecology program of the NSF and the Field Museum, which is providing approximately 55% of the total in construction and equipment costs, student tuition, and staff time.