RAMHSS: Facilities Support for the Mammal Collection, Field Museum of Natural History

芝加哥菲尔德自然历史博物馆是世界上最重要的哺乳动物收藏之一。自1893年以来，博物馆收集了来自地球上几乎每个国家的哺乳动物标本，几乎代表了所有现存的科和大多数属。菲尔德博物馆哺乳动物馆藏规模和覆盖范围居全国第三位，世界第四位。这个巨大的资源被广泛应用于各种科学背景中。保存下来的材料主要用于哺乳动物进化的研究，但也广泛用于解剖学、考古学、古生物学、体质人类学、兽医学、生态学、生物地理学和野生动物管理的研究。巨大的地理和分类范围吸引了世界各地的科学家。为了帮助馆藏向科学家群体提供服务，本项目拨款用于(1)验证和扩展现有的计算机目录数据库。一旦得到核实，该数据库将允许更迅速、更准确和更全面地检索资料，供收藏的许多用户使用；(2)将1928年至1929年收集的非洲哺乳动物的大皮和已经清洗过的骨骼材料进行鞣制。这些材料是由密尔沃基公共博物馆为展览收集的，里面有许多濒危物种，这些物种在收藏中很少有代表性，55年来这些材料一直没有被清洗和晒黑，直到它们被菲尔德博物馆采用。美国国家科学基金会的支持将使这个集合完全可供科学界使用。

Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago maintains one of the world's premier mammal collections. Since 1893, the Museum has assembled mammal specimens from nearly every country on earth, representing virtually all of the extant families and most genera. In terms of size and coverage, the mammal collection of Field Museum ranks third nationally and fourth in the world. This immense resource is used in a wide variety of scientific contexts. Preserved materials are used mainly in studies of mammalian evolution, but are also intensively used in studies of anatomy, archeology, paleontology, physical anthropology, veterinary medicine, ecology, biogeography, and wildlife management. The huge geographic and taxonomic range of the collections attracts use by scientists the world over. In order to aid the collection in providing services to the community of scientists, this project awards funds to (1) verify and expand an existing computerized catalogue database. Once verified, the database will permit faster, more accurate, and more comprehensive information retrieval for the collection's many users; (2) tan large skins and house already-cleaned skeletal material of African mammals collected in 1928-29. Collected for exhibits by the Milwaukee Public Museum and containing numerous endangered species that are poorly represented in collections, the materials remained uncleaned and untanned for 55 years, until they were adopted by Field Museum. The NSF support will make this collection fully available to the scientific community.