AMNH-IP-Columbia University Collection

 

Curation and Conservation of Columbia University Fossil Invertebrate Collection at the AMNH, Summer 2024 (A Pilot Project) 





Columbia University Collection - Curation and Conservation - 2024

Week 2

 
The interns holding our favorite fossils! (From left to right: Elizabeth, Corra, Makena, Mac)

We started off our week being trained on how to catalog using KE EMu (which stands for electronic museums). Photos of all of the specimens we cleaned, rehoused, and photographed last week were uploaded to KE EMu. Our job is to enter all the information on the specimen labels into the database so later the fossils can be searched for or accessed online by researchers to study and or examine.

Our tour this week was of the mineral collection in the Earth and Planetary Sciences department. Jamie Newman, Senior Museum Specialist, kindly showed us beautiful specimens of minerals like Beryl and Azurite. We also learned about the Dana's Mineral Classification system. One unique naturally occurring mineral that really stood out to us was called Itacolumite which becomes a flexible bendable sandstone when sliced into thin slabs!




Getting to see behind the scenes at the museum and getting a peak into the vast collections has been really exciting.



This is an ancestor of a squid which has some of its soft tissue and ink sac preserved. Hilary Ketchum, Curatorial Associate of Invertebrate Paleontology at AMNH, told us the story of the first one of its kind found in England by Mary Anning in the early 1800s. It is now housed in a museum in Cambridge. 
We have continued exploring the museum during our lunch breaks. We went to the Invisible Worlds exhibit, which is an immersive look into places like the ocean or the roots of a plant that are able to be seen with the human eye. We also looked around the Hall of Minerals on three different days. 




We are on our second week of living in New York City. Over the weekend, we took advantage of our time off and walked around the city enjoying the infinite activities it has to offer. On Saturday, we walked 12 miles from 125th St to Canal St and explored the Guggenheim Museum (with free entrance using our AMNH ID's!)


specimen images: Courtesy of AMNH

Comments

  1. Iphigene'sDreamJuly 19, 2024 at 10:20 PM

    Hurray! You are e-cataloging and database-building. Great work! And... talk about exploring / benefiting from your NYC location : twelve miles in one day, including a major museum visit ! (This makes me wonder: how many miles have you walked within AMNH itself, while visiting different exhibits and departments?? --Christine

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