The Use of Museum Specimens in Research: three case studies

The field of paleontology has long been focused upon fieldwork and specimen collection. This results in many exciting discoveries of new fossil sites and new specimens, but it also results in many specimens being deposited in museums without being studied. Museum collections, especially well-curated ones, are therefore an underutilized source of exciting specimens and exciting, high profile research projects. Here I present three case studies that are based on the investigation of museum specimens. In all cases, the specimens have been in museum collections for at least 50 years, they were brought to my attention by museum curators or collections managers, and the results are (or will be once they are published) high profile. (1) The Tully Monster is an enigmatic fossil organism from the Carboniferous Mazon Creek fossil site. It was first discovered (and hundreds of specimens added to the Field Museum collections) in 1958, over 60 years ago, but was never successfully identified even to the phylum level.  Despite being studied for more than 50 years, there is still no consensus about which phylum the Tully Monster belongs to. Based on re-investigating the well-preserved soft tissue morphology in the well-curated and fully photographed Tully Monster collection at the Field Museum, and investigating for the first time the well-preserved biomolecules, I argue that the Tully Monster was most likely a chordate. (2) Eurypterids ('sea scorpions') are an extinct group of aquatic chelicerate arthropods, related to scorpions and horseshoe crabs. Here I present an investigation of a specimen from the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow: a concretion with a eurypterid showing exceptional, three-dimensional preservation of the soft tissue gill structures. The gill structure suggests a few interesting features of eurypterid respiration. (3) Horseshoe crabs, and related organisms, are known to fluoresce under UV light. This fluorescence is assumed to also occur in extinct horseshoe crabs, but has never previously been demonstrated. The Mazon Creek concretionary fossil site includes some exceptionally well-preserved specimens of the extinct horseshoe crab Euproops which still fluoresce, even after 300 million years of diagenesis. Chemical and histological investigations of these unique specimens -- which depend upon exceptional preservation of the labile exocuticle layer and the fluorescent biomolecules contained therein -- allow us to compare the ancient fluorescent to modern fluoresce, and may help us understand whether or not eurypterids fluoresced. 

Monday, April 1, 2019 at 1:00pm

Museum of Natural History (Henderson), Paleontology Hall
1035 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80309

Recent Activity