Samples from the American crocodile, the Channel Islands fox, and the Hawaiian gooseall endangered species studied within the U.S. National Parksare set to join neotropical butterflies, rare leeches, and snippets of sea stars in the American Museum of Natural History's frozen library, the Ambrose Monell Cryo Collection. Currently, this collection cryogenically-preserves the DNA of about 40,000 species in nitrogen-cooled vats and distributes to requests to geneticists free of charge.
On July 7, 2009, representatives of the Park Service came to New York to sign a formal agreement with the Museum. Material collected from the most important biological resources of the country, endangered species, will be routinely iced in the Museum's pristine, meticulous lab. This video, introduced by George Amato, Director of the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics, documents the signing of the agreement by Bert Frost, Associate Director of Natural Resource Stewardship and Science at the National Park Service, and Darrel Frost, Associate Dean of Science for Collections at the Museum.
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