Fossil Insects and Amber Fossils at the American Museum of Natural History: Preparation, Curation, and Conservation

美国自然历史博物馆的昆虫学部门收藏了13，500件昆虫化石标本，其中包括624种。 主要优势是琥珀中的化石，白垩纪化石，以及来自科罗拉多弗洛里森特的渐新世页岩中相当大的历史昆虫收藏，这些化石80年来几乎没有得到任何保护。 该提案旨在完成几千个琥珀和压缩化石标本的准备和编目工作;确定大约2000个标本;将压缩化石存放在新的抽屉中;准备所有类型和其他重要的琥珀标本以供长期保护;并为选定的标本制作高分辨率的计算机断层扫描图像。 此外，该项目还将研究新技术，如高分辨率软X射线成像，作为从受损和退化的琥珀源生成数据的一种手段。

The Department of Entomology at the American Museum of Natural History houses 13,500 specimens of fossil insects, including 624 types. The main strengths are fossils in amber, Cretaceous fossils, and sizeable historical collection of insects in Oligocene shales from Florissant, Colorado, that has received virtually no curation for 80 years. This proposal seeks to complete preparation and cataloguing of several thousand amber and compression fossil specimens; to identify approximately 2000 specimens; to house the compression fossils in new drawers; to prepare all types and other important amber specimens for long-term conservation; and to create high-resolution Computed Tomography images of selected specimens. In addition, the project will investigate new technology such as High-Resolution Soft-Xray imaging as a means to generate data from damaged and degraded amber sources.