Ok, the title was kind of a failed pun referring to how amusing museums are.
I have been doing some voluntary work at the Museum of Evolution in Uppsala – one of the finest in Europe, I’ve been told.
I am not going to write much about it this time, but more will surely come up in the near future. I had just finished my ‘trial task’, which involved checking a collection of fossil material used for a paper (on cephalopods), and labelling the specimen with the correct reference number. Today (written last Wedensday, but somehow this post didn't get published, and I found out now), I started on the ‘real’ collections: the holotype specimen collections. A holotype is the original fossil upon which a species is based on, so this collection is incredibly important. No pressure.
This work is about the same, although much more complicated, as the reference literature is more than just one paper, and the literature is sometimes missing, and then I must try to find it over the internet, if it is there.
Also, in this type collection, I came across the absolutely most horrible fossil group there is: the graptoloids, a ghastly type of slimy, colonial, planktonic (free-floating) filter-feeders, apparently closely related to vertebrates, but the resemblance is vague. They basically look like thin, stiff, mildly branched shoelaces, or maybe shrubby herb plants (though they are naimals). The most exciting form I have seen so far is one where one side is toothed like a table knife. That’s about it. So a word of warning: avoid graptoloids!
I have been doing some voluntary work at the Museum of Evolution in Uppsala – one of the finest in Europe, I’ve been told.
I am not going to write much about it this time, but more will surely come up in the near future. I had just finished my ‘trial task’, which involved checking a collection of fossil material used for a paper (on cephalopods), and labelling the specimen with the correct reference number. Today (written last Wedensday, but somehow this post didn't get published, and I found out now), I started on the ‘real’ collections: the holotype specimen collections. A holotype is the original fossil upon which a species is based on, so this collection is incredibly important. No pressure.
This work is about the same, although much more complicated, as the reference literature is more than just one paper, and the literature is sometimes missing, and then I must try to find it over the internet, if it is there.
Also, in this type collection, I came across the absolutely most horrible fossil group there is: the graptoloids, a ghastly type of slimy, colonial, planktonic (free-floating) filter-feeders, apparently closely related to vertebrates, but the resemblance is vague. They basically look like thin, stiff, mildly branched shoelaces, or maybe shrubby herb plants (though they are naimals). The most exciting form I have seen so far is one where one side is toothed like a table knife. That’s about it. So a word of warning: avoid graptoloids!
This day was pretty heavy, mostly because I had to wake up extremely early to get to the museum, the sky was grey and rainy all the time, the museum work was rather confusing at first, and my encounter with the graptoloids did not make it better. So I thought it might be best to leave the tale as it is for now, and come back a brighter day! Cheers!
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