Critical upgrades and digitization of the UAM Earth Sciences Collection

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The University of Alaska Museum (UAM) Earth Sciences Collection in Fairbanks includes over 60,000 fossil specimens, including the largest collection of polar dinosaurs in the world and the second largest collection of Ice Age mammals from Alaska. This irreplaceable resource has tripled in size in the last 30 years, and much of the collection is improperly housed and overcrowded, and access to specimen data is severely limited. This NSF-sponsored project will provide funding for critical upgrades to the collection. UAM will purchase much-needed mobile storage shelving and reorganize and properly house the collection for the first time. Importantly, the entire fossil vertebrate collection will be electronically data-based, bar-coded, and photographed. UAM is the major natural history museum for a region encompassing an area one-fifth the size of the contiguous United States. The specimen data captured during this project will be made freely accessible to the public, researchers, and land managers via the Internet, making it one of the best-documented paleontology collections in the nation. This project will enhance scientific research in Alaska, provide valuable training and employment for graduate and undergraduate science students and help to spotlight Alaskan fossils to UAM's 90,000 annual visitors.