Support for the Field Museum Fossil Invertebrate Collection

菲尔德博物馆的化石无脊椎动物收藏因其巨大的规模和对系统学、进化和古生态学研究的持续重要性而在国际上得到认可。 该系列包括约320，000个样本批次，多达200万个个体样本。 然而，标本过度拥挤阻碍了充分发挥标本收藏潜力的努力。 实施本提案中概述的项目将使收藏更有条理、不那么拥挤、更容易获得。 该项目将成功地解决保护问题，首先是通过策展我们的大部分积压藏品，其次是通过缓解标本的拥挤。 该材料的分类划分和标本纳入时间/系统框架的整合被视为最实用和科学上有益的方式来对待它。该项目概述了整个集合的重组和移动，以及工作人员和访问策展人对模式标本，棘皮动物和古生代腹足动物的额外初级策展。 最近将古植物学收藏搬到新的设施，为这种需要提供了额外的橱柜空间。对积压材料的整理和收藏将使科学界能够有效地获得“新”标本。

The Field Museum's Fossil Invertebrate Collection is recognized internationally for its vast size and ongoing significance to research in systematics, evolution, and paleoecology. The collection includes about 320,000 specimen lots with as many as 2 million individual specimens. However, specimen overcrowding has hampered efforts to realize the full potential of the collection. Implementation of the project outlined in this proposal will result in a better organized, less crowded, and more easily accessible collection. The project will successfully address conservation issues, first by curating much of our backlog holdings, and second by alleviating crowding of specimens. The taxonomic division of this material and the integration of specimens into a temporal/systematic framework is viewed as the most practical and scientifically beneficial manner in which to treat it. This project outlines the reorganization and move of the entire collection, and additional primary curation by staff and visiting curators for type specimens, echinoderms and Paleozoic gastropods. The recent move of paleobotanical collections to new facilities has provided additional cabinet space more than sufficient for this need. The curation and incorporation of the backlog material in collections will result in effectively "new" specimens becoming available to the scientific community.