Vertebrate Paleontology

With its first dinosaur fossil collected in 1897, the AMNH fossil amphibian, reptile, and bird collection (FARB) quickly became, and still remains, the largest such collection in the world, currently housing over 30,000 catalogued specimens including many type specimens.

The American Museum of Natural History has the world's largest collection of dinosaurs, with a focus on North American and Asian taxa. Important specimens, obtained by collectors such as Edward Drinker Cope and Charles Sternberg many years before the Museum organized its own expeditions, were acquired early on in the department's history; Sternberg continued to provide superb specimens through into the 1930s, many of which are currently on display. In the 1920's and 1930's, the Museum's Central Asiatic Expeditions, led by Roy Chapman Andrews, added significant Mongolian material to the collections. Roland T. Bird carried out collecting for Barnum Brown at a number of North American sites well into the 1940s. The famous early dinosaur quarry at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, was extensively collected in the late 1940s by Edwin Colbert; this material continues to provide new taxa of Late Triassic reptiles. FARB also houses representative collections of early synapsids from South Africa collected by Robert Broom and Permian vertebrates from Texas collected by Cope, as well as noteworthy Carboniferous tetrapods from Linton, Ohio.

Current research in the collections, under the direction of curator Roger Benson, concentrates on Paleozoic and Mesozoic terrestrial vertebrates. 

Paleoichthyology has been an integral part of research in paleontology since the founding of the Department of Geology and Paleontology in 1876.

The first fossil fish collections were acquired in 1877 (W.C. Redfield Collection) and 1899 (J. Terrell Collection). The holdings grew rapidly with major accessions in 1901-1907 (D.S. Dodge, E.D. Cope, C. Sternberg, J.S. Newberry, and W. Kepler collections), so that by 1907 there were about 8,800 specimens. The specimens were organized by Bashford Dean and catalogued by Louis Hussakof (the latter also undertook the first AMNH expeditions for collecting fossil fish in 1906-7). In 1909, living and fossil fishes were brought together in a separate Department of Ichthyology under the auspices of Bashford Dean and later under William King Gregory. Fossil fish were transferred to the Department of Geology and Paleontology in 1944 under Edwin H. Colbert, and the collection saw much growth and reorganization following the appointment of Bobb Schaeffer in 1946. Undoubtedly the most significant acquisition during this period was the William Patten collection of over 4,500 primitive fishes including ostracoderms, placoderms, and sarcopterygians.

Following the appointment of John Maisey in 1979, a major NSF-supported reorganization of both the collection and its catalog was undertaken. The holdings also grew significantly with the addition of several collections from Ohio Wesleyan University, Dr. H.R. Axelrod, and the University of Kentucky. By 1984, the fossil fish collection was estimated to contain over 27,500 specimens. Such growth reflects the highly visible institutional commitment to research on early primitive vertebrates. Current research activities (2006) include the evolution of primitive jawed vertebrates and the earliest sharks, CT scanning and digital imaging technology, and Cretaceous fossil fishes from North and South America.

RT Bird examining the palm frond (AMNH FP 378) before extraction

But only recently – late 2012 – did curating and cataloging of this modest collection really begin. The paleobotany collection is global in scope and has thousands of specimens going back to as old as 400 million years. Particular areas of focus for North America are the Late Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation of South Dakota, the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation of Wyoming, and petrifactions.

A highlight of the collection is an Early Cretaceous palm frond collected by departmental field collector Roland Thaxter (“RT”) Bird. It was extracted from the ceiling of a collapsing Colorado coal mine in 1937. This mine was closed down around 1912, and was falling apart when RT collected this specimen, so where this palm frond was collected is doubtlessly caved-in and lost to further collecting.

While they may not attract as much public attention as the Museum's dinosaurs, fossil mammals have always been a key component of vertebrate paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History. Henry Fairfield Osborn, who arrived in 1891, was himself a mammal paleontologist and was responsible for hiring several outstanding vertebrate paleontologists with interests in fossil mammals: these included William Diller Matthew, William K. Gregory, Walter Granger, and Jacob Wortman. In 1895, the Museum purchased E. D. Cope's collection of c. 10,000 North American fossil mammals; the Cope collections, containing many important type specimens, became the kernel of the paleontological collection.

The fossil mammal collection grew under the guardianship of Osborn, who became Museum President in 1908. Important expeditions were made to the Fayum Basin, Egypt (1901); the Bridger Basin of Wyoming (1903, 1904), the White River Badlands of South Dakota (1906), and the Miocene Agate Springs site of western Nebraska (1919). The Central Asiatic Expeditions of the 1920s, under the direction of Roy Chapman Andrews, although best known for their dinosaur discoveries, made extensive collections of Cenozoic mammals.

In 1916, the Department of Paleontology began a long association with Childs Frick, the son of steel magnate Henry Clay Frick and a longtime American Museum trustee. Using his personal fortune to employ a small army of collectors and researchers including Morris Skinner, Theodore Galusha and Beryl Taylor, Frick accumulated a collection of over 200,000 fossil mammals, which formed the basis of a series of monographic studies on mammal evolution. The collection was donated to the Museum after Frick's death in 1965. The financial assets of the Childs Frick Corporation, which were donated to the Museum along with Frick's fossil collections in 1968, assisted in the construction of a new, 10-story collection and office building, which opened in 1973. 

In recent years AMNH Provost and Senior Vice President Michael Novacek and Curator Malcolm McKenna reestablished the long standing ties between the Museum and Central Asia, making a remarkable series of discoveries in Mongolia that are providing new insights into the evolution of mammals. Similar close field research and training collaborations in paleomammalogy are underway in China (Jin Meng) and South America (John Flynn).

A type specimen is any specimen that has been designated as the name-bearer in the original published description of a taxon (Art. 73a, International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, 1999). In the Paleontology collections, the term "type specimen"; is usually applied to holotypes (the single specimen or fragment on which a species is based) and genotypes (the single specimen or fragment on which a genus is based). Holotype specimens are marked with a single red diamond, whereas genotypes are labeled with a double diamond. Type specimens are examined when a researcher needs to determine the morphological paradigm associated with a particular name. It is estimated that there are approximately 2,000 type specimens in Fossil Mammals, and with an average of 50 visiting researchers per year, the collection is examined quite frequently. Because of their frequent handling and use of comparison, it is critical that they are re-housed in proper storage enclosures.

Unlike many museum type collections, which are housed separately from the main collection, the AMNH fossil mammal types are mixed in with the main collection, the rationale being that types are most useful when seen in the context of other material from the taxon concerned. Because of the dispersed nature of the collection, maintaining an accurate inventory of the types has been problematic historically. There are also issues with the physical housing of the specimens, which are often stored using inferior materials (i.e. acidic boxes, acidic tissue, and cotton wadding), and may be poorly supported, over-crowded (i.e. trays were too small, too many specimens within a drawer, etc.), and poorly organized.

The Fossil Mammal Type Collection is currently being inventoried, surveyed, and re-housed in as part of a National Science Foundation supported project (NSF DBI-545155). The first phase of this work, in the summer of 2006, involved two student interns from art conservation and paleontological degree programs. The interns worked with the Museum's Natural Sciences Conservation Lab to develop simple and cost-effective conservation-standard housings for specimens. The condition of each specimen prior to rehousing was recorded and stored in an Access database. In addition, training materials and handling guides were produced to assist Museum staff and volunteers to continue the project after the interns left.

Perissodactyls, also known as odd-toed ungulates, are a group of herbivorous mammals that are defined by having middle toe that is larger than the others, with the plane of symmetry of the foot passing through it (called a mesaxonic foot). Most species have three digits on the hindfoot and three or four on the forefoot, but in some only a single digit, the third, remains. There are three groups of perissodactyls extant today; horses, rhinos, and tapirs. A further two groups are known only from the fossil record; these are the chalicotheres and titanotheres.

The AMNH fossil mammal collection contains 18,919 catalogued specimens of perissodactyl in 151 genera, including 71 genotypes and 231 holotypes, and ca. 45,000 uncataloged specimens, occupying two whole floors of the Childs Frick Building (also known as Building 3A). Over 40,000 of these are fossil horses; this is by far the largest collection of extinct horses of in the world, covering the entire evolutionary history of the group, from its first appearance during the Eocene epoch, around 55 million years ago, through to the present day, and providing the foundation for much of our understanding of the systematics and evolution of horses.

The AMNH perissodactyl collection has formed the basis for a number of major monographic studies, from H.F. Osborn's magisterial study of the titanotheres, published in 1929, through to more modern work, such as Don Prothero's 2005 monograph on the evolution of rhinos in North America. Numerous Ph.D. students have used the collection as the basis for their doctoral researches, some of whom have gone on to notable careers in paleontology; these include Michael Woodburne, Bruce Macfadden, and Margery Coombs.

Despite the importance of the collection, there have been a number of areas where it has fallen short of the highest standards of curation. Many of the specimen cabinets were over 75 years old, and did not meet current conservation standards. Oversized specimens often were stored 2 to 4 deep on substandard shelving, meaning that over half of them could not be accessed without moving other specimens. Many specimens were stored in boxes without any protection, or padded with cotton wadding, whose fibers can snag on specimens, causing damage. Specimen trays were made of cardboard which can produce acidic byproducts that damage specimen labels and the various adhesives and consolidants used in specimen preparation. Finally, although development of electronic databases for the Division have made on-line access to complex georeferenced locality data a reality for some specimens, detailed locality data are dispersed across the collection and associated archives, in card catalogs, shipping records, field notes, and maps. In order to provide high quality, georeferenced data to collection users, these disparate data sources will need to be consolidated.

Over the next three years, as part of the 3A project, and with the assistance of funding from the National Science Foundation, the perissodactyl collection will be undergoing a major overhaul. Physical housing of the collection will be improved by the purchase of 166 new cabinets and 40 storage racks; replacement of damaged drawers and specimen trays; and lining of stores and trays with archival standard foam. Access to specimen data will be improved by the georeferencing of the c. 1,800 specimen localities associated with the perissodactyl collection; enhancing on-line specimen descriptions; and addressing the backlog of uncataloged material in the collection.

As part of the NSF-funded project, the Division will be developing on-line resources to enable guided, in-depth access to the collection and associated records. The first of these should be available by 2009, but additional information will be added to this website from time-to-time as the project proceeds.

The Division of Paleontology has launched a new website about Perissodactyls. This website was developed as part of the NSF grant: Support for the AMNH Fossil Mammal Collection: An Integrated Program to Rehouse Types and Perissodactyla, and Enhance On-Line Collections Data and Web-Based Educational Resources DBI 0545155

Building 3A, also known as the Childs Frick Building, was completed in 1973. It has 11 floors, including the basement. It was constructed in an interior courtyard and despite the fact that it is one of the tallest buildings at the Museum, it is invisible from the surrounding streets. The top three floors are occupied by offices of the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology and by the fossil preparation laboratory. The remaining floors, totaling nearly 40,000 square feet of storage, are used to house the Division's fossil mammal collection.

Building 3A was constructed to address the problem of accommodating the vast fossil mammal collections of Childs Frick, which were donated to the Museum in 1968. The donation doubled the size of the AMNH fossil mammal collection, causing considerable storage problems. Before the construction of Building 3A, approximately half of the collection was physically inaccessible; around 50% of the collection had no storage furniture, or was stored on fixed wooden shelves; 2,095 drawers of specimens were not in cabinets, but stacked from floor to ceiling in some areas.

At the time of construction, the new building represented the very latest thinking in collection storage. More than thirty years later, however, it is showing its age. In 2003, the Museum started work on an ambitious program to refurbish the collection floors. This work, which will take until 2010 to complete, requires the movement of the entire fossil mammal collection, totaling some 400,000 specimens.

In the first phase of the project, in 2003, the contents of the 5th floor of 3A, consisting of around 50,000 specimens of artiodactyls (even-toed ungulates) were moved to the basement of an adjoining building. The empty 5th floor was then refurbished, and used to accommodate the contents of the 7th floor. The project proceeds in this stepwise manner - as each floor is completed, the contents of the next floor to be refurbished is moved in. When the last floor has been refurbished, it will be used to house the 50,000 specimens that were moved out of 3A in phase one.

During the moves, the Division is able to address some of the long-standing curatorial problems of the fossil mammal collection. Substandard specimen cabinets are replaced; new shelving is installed to house oversized specimens; specimens on open shelves are cleaned; damaged drawers are replaced; and the collection is returned to a taxonomically-consistent arrangement that makes it easier to for staff and visitors to find specimens.

As of November 2008, the Museum had renovated seven out of eight collection floors; replaced 396 substandard storage cabinets with modern, lockable, gasket sealed cabinets; installed 77 new heavy duty storage racks; and cleaned over 9,500 specimens. For the last two years, efforts have been focused on the two floors of the building that house the Museum's world-renowned collection of fossil perissodactyls. This work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Biological Infrastructure.

Digital imaging of the fossil mammal collection was undertaken as part of a larger initiative to capture images of the Paleontology collection and make them available on-line, which was funded by NASA through a grant to the American Museum of Natural History. Between April 2004 and June 2005, a total of just under 2,000 images of specimens from 26 Orders of fossil mammal were captured and made available on-line via the Division's Mesonyx database (also developed using NASA funding).

The majority of the imaging in the fossil mammal collection was undertaken by photographer Vickie Healy, with assistance from Rick Edwards. Images were captured using a Canon D10 digital SLR and saved as archival TIFF files (these large files may be available for research publication purposes on application to the Division). Smaller JPEG images were prepared for publication on the Web.

Large-scale imaging of the fossil mammal collection was discontinued with the end of NASA support in 2005. However, digital imaging continues to be a component of ongoing and future projects, such as the ongoing NSF-funded improvements to the collection.

Materials in the archive are important in placing the fossil specimens in greater historical and scientific context. They contain records of expeditions to collect specimens and often include details on the lives of the field crew during these expeditions and the larger cultural and social context in which they occurred. They also illustrate how these findings were interpreted at the time of discovery and how those interpretations may have changed over time as successive generations of scientists studied them.

With the generous support of IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services), a dedicated team (including a Project Archivist and Interns, Research Library staff and Vertebrate Paleontology collections staff) was awarded several grants to catalog and database the contents, improving access to the department's archives in order to encourage their discovery and use by researchers, students, and the general public. A dedicated team, including a Project Archivist and Interns supported by the grant, Research Library staff and Vertebrate Paleontology collections staff

Read more about this work in our current blog (written by Maya Naunton, Project Archivist) and our first blog series (maintained by Melissa Silvestri, Project Archivist).

Currently, only a small, but ever-growing subset of the archive materials are searchable in an online database.

Visit the Vertebrate Paleontology Archives.