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 4

This week...

Below is a picture of our very-official looking portraits on the Invertebrate Paleontology bulletin board.


After another weekend full of adventures, we began our fourth week of our AMNH internship!

Our tour this week was of the petrology collection in the Earth and Planetary Sciences where we got a talk from Nicole Childs about the different specimens in the department. She showed us cores of rock which were drilled out of a mining site and described to us how it had to be analyzed by a geologist in order to determine the ore content in the earth below and the structure. By analyzing the structure and content they decide whether it is worth it to continue to mine for the minerals they're looking for. She also offered other ways geologists may be useful in construction or oil drilling for the same purpose of looking at the mineral content and structure of the rock cores which put in perspective why we're learning what we are in class to later apply it to a real job. She also showed us meteorites which were composed of olivine, iron, and nickel (left) and just iron and nickel (right).  


We continued with cleaning, photographing, and cataloging the specimens. Here are some of the prettiest ones!
    


As we have been going through the work we have been encountering some challenges. Over the years, labels and specimens have gotten mixed up and we have to figure out what goes together. Sometimes, the labels don't go with any specimens, so we have accumulated a box of loose labels. We try our best to preserve the work of geologists before us in preserving the history of the record of the Earth.


As Week 4 comes to an end, we realize that we are more than halfway through this incredible internship. We are excited to explore the full extent of what the museum and city have to offer in the upcoming weeks!

AMNH-IP-Columbia University Collection

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

AMNH IP- Mackenzie (CC Intern) at the Museum (AMNH)

Image
 Hi, my name is Mackenzie Boyd! I recently graduated from Colorado College (CC) with a Bachelor of Arts in Geology. I also grew up in Colorado and have always been curious about the natural features around me. I have had an interest in Geology since I was four years old, at which time I would tell people that "when I grow up, I want to be a geologist! And a mermaid" I grew out of the mermaid idea, but geology and the natural sciences have continued to hold a special place in my heart. To be able to read the stories of the rocks, to understand what the Earth was like at a different time, has been such a gift in my life. I started at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City four weeks ago, (thanks to the Noblett-Witter Family Internship offered by CC); and so far, I have been looking at a much different period in Earth's history than I had ever studied previously. I have been looking in the Paleozoic, specifically the Devonian and Mississippian, and th...
Read more

AMNH IP- Mackenzie (CC Intern) at the Museum (AMNH)

Image
The highlight of this week was definitely the tour Bushra and I went on around Invertebrate Zoology! Corey Smith, a Senior Museum Specialist in the department, showed us all around the Insect collection of pinned specimens. We started with the beetles, which is what Corey now works on, and I was amazed by the diversity of specimens we saw! We saw some of the largest beetles on the planet, about the width of my fist, as well as some of the smallest, about the size of an ant. I remarked that if I had seen a lot of these outside, I would not have guessed they were beetles, but rather a weird insect I was not familiar with. Corey said he thinks that is not an uncommon way people think. But going forward, I will now be able to hazard a guess that weird insect is actually a beetle!       Drawer of goliath beetles (Scarabaeidae)                           Drawer of longhorn beetles (Cerambycidae)     ...
Read more

AMNH IP- Mackenzie (CC Intern) at the Museum (AMNH)

Image
It has been a wonderful last few weeks at AMNH! I went on a tour around the Vertebrate Paleontology Department and got to walk through their fossil preparation lab as well as some of their collections. I was a fossil preparation intern at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science a couple years ago, and got to explore some of their vertebrate paleontology collections during my time there. Still, seeing the process of removing a fossil from the surrounding matrix, or the final product safely stored in collections, never ceases to amaze me.     Sauropod tail bones, Late Jurassic, Wyoming                      Holotype skull of  Anchiceratops ornatus , Late Cretaceous, Alberta       Background: Skull model from original  Brontosaurus  mount (or facsimile thereof) Middle ground; Dinosaur long bone Foreground: Cast of Late Jurassic  Camarasaurus  skull The collections space we were...
Read more