Continental trace fossils and museum exhibits - Geological Curators ...

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amount of space needed to accommodate thecollection if it is not to be cluttered, cramped orconfusing. Thus, the following organisation couldbe followed throughout the collection, each drawerbearing a label showing:1. Geographical location - e.g., Isle of Wight,British Isles, North America.2. Stratigraphical level - how old is it?3. Ichnotaxon - its classification within the system.4. Alphabetical - arranged within theichnotaxonomic organisation.Such a scheme of organisation is used by the NationaalNatuurhistorisch Museum, Leiden (NNHM), aprimary stratigraphic organisation being secondarilygrouped into geographic areas, e.g., Devonian –Germany, Devonian – France; Upper Cretaceous –The Netherlands, Upper Cretaceous – Germany.Ichnofossils should not be classified according totheir perceived producing organism. Any givenichnofossil morphology may potentially have beenproduced by more than one biological species, whichmay belong to different phyla (Pickerill 1994). Onlyin cases where the producing organism is preservedin intimate juxtaposition with the trace can such anidentity be established with confidence.Whichever style the institution or curator chooses tofollow is not so important as long as specimens can belocated. There may also be a necessity to divide thecollection into large and small components, wherebylarge slabs requiring shelf space have to be separatedoff from small ‘hand specimens’ which can be storedin drawers. If this has to be done, the standard layoutshould be followed as far as possible.Two national collectionsThe evolution of a collection of items in a museumcan tell a lot about the development of the museum asan institution of scientific excellence. Some of theolder museums throughout the world may have startedlife as simple displays of curios without any particularregard to order. As scientific experience grew, bettermethods of display developed. Storage methods soonfollowed suit, for the collections began to grow asinterest was fired amongst the population, and noteverything could be put on show. Some museumswere set up around a core collection, such as that ofHans Sloane for the British Museum, whose naturalhistory collection was the core which eventually ledto the founding of the daughter institution, the BritishMuseum (Natural History), as the Natural HistoryMuseum (BMNH) in London was known untilrecently. The BMNH is now completely independentof the parent museum.The Natural History Museum, LondonThe trace fossil collection in the Department ofPalaeontology at the BMNH is modest in size andrepresents collections made from the nineteenthcentury onwards. In the past it contained pretty muchanything that was not readily identifiable, withartifacts (including lumps of concrete with theimpression of the sacking that had once contained it),curiously shaped stones, wind-polished rocks fromdeserts and lumps of rock with strange markings,including mineral dendrites resembling plants. Inamongst these were to be found true trace fossils - theremains of the lifestyles of organisms. It alsocontained, and indeed still does, the Problematica,that is, body fossils of unknown identity.Eventually, the whole mixed collection was sortedout and, with some exceptions, the non-trace fossilcomponent was removed from the collection andtransferred to the correct locations elsewhere in themuseum. The exceptions include plaster models ofBeringer’s iconoliths (Taylor 2004) and curiouslyshaped flints that have a fanciful resemblance tovarious animals (see Lewis 2000). Other nonbiologicalspecimens are also retained for the purposeof illustrating to interested parties the pitfalls for theunwary. One fine example of these, amongst many, isan object which resembles an eviscerated stomachand which is actually a ceramic bottle that collapsedduring firing.The remaining true trace fossils are now stored intheir own part of the storage system of the Departmentof Palaeontology. They occupy 125 drawers in threeand a half cabinets, six shelves in two cabinets and afew slots in the roller storage set aside for large slabs(for a description of the storage units see Owen et al.1982). These do not include the trace fossils whoseproducers are well known and which are stored withthe relevant taxa in other parts of the collections,including the dinosaur tracks stored with fossilreptiles, most of the Gastrochaenolites specimensstored with the molluscs and Gnathichnus which arekept with the fossil echinoids.Material from the Ediacara Formation of Australia isalso kept together rather than being distributedalphabetically, with the rock specimens beingsupplemented by plaster casts of the originals held inAustralian museums. These fossils also come into thecategory of ‘problematica’, a mixture of trace andbody fossils preserved as natural moulds and casts.Even though some of these remains may eventually-257-
prove to be nothing more that sedimentary structuresand not biologically produced entities, they shouldbe kept together for contextual and historical reasons.This may seem to be returning to the earlier days ofkeeping together everything that was not identifiable,but now there is the difference of experience and newknowledge rather than ignorance and not knowingwhat to do with them. Research into another part ofthe problematica collections, the so-called ‘Muschia’from the Devonian Gogo Formation of Australia,reveal that parts can be re-distributed to fossil fishesand crustaceans. The name ‘Muschia’, an unofficialone, indicates the general state of the preservation, ageneralised mush.The arrangement of the collection in a user-friendlystate was non-existent for many years, with everythingmixed in together. This made finding a specimenextremely difficult and time consuming, such that thewhole collection had to be trawled through in order tolocate something required. In the early 1990s a startwas made to re-organise the trace fossils collectionsinto something more user-friendly. Volunteers,including several from the Museum front-of-housestaff (as part of their training to see how the ScienceDepartments worked), carried out an initial sortthrough the material, firstly to re-box and re-labelspecimens, and then to sort roughly into similaritems. Later on, another volunteer, a non-member ofthe staff who had an interest in trace fossils, againsorted through the collections, identifying as best aspossible the ichnotaxa present. It was then very mucheasier to re-organise the collection, doing soalphabetically for the most part, but with certaindiscrete parts kept together, usually because theywere cited in various scientific papers.When the re-arrangement was complete, the drawerswere re-labelled and location indexes wereconstructed so that specimens could be extractedeasily and quickly. Furthermore, both the drawerlabels and index can be updated easily.The next phase of the operation will be to sort out andre-organise the material on the shelf units. This willbe rather more tricky as some of the specimens arelarge and heavy, so that placing them in their correctalphabetic location may not be possible withoutendangering those who may want to look at them andremove them from the collections. Heavy specimenson a high shelf can be a problem without specialisthandling equipment.Currently, the trace fossil collections are used onlyoccasionally by external visitors (e.g., Donovan 2002)and, more often, by internal staff. With pressure onthe storage capacity of the Department ofPalaeontology there is a possibility that the wholecollection will be removed from the South Kensingtonsite to the outstation at Wandsworth, where storage ismuch less cramped and environmental conditions arethe equal of the main museum. However, access isless immediate and transport to the site is moredifficult.Nationaal Natuurhistorisch Museum, LeidenThe trace fossil collection of the NNHM is small,reflecting a previous lack of interest in ichnology inThe Netherlands and the museum. There are currentlyabout 60 drawers of ichnofossils, ranging throughoutthe Phanerozoic. The collection is richest in specimensfrom northwest Europe and Spain, particularly theDevonian and Mesozoic. Many specimens areawaiting identification or re-identification. Type andfigured specimens are few. However, S.K.D. and coworkersare currently actively researching theichnology of the Upper Cretaceous of northern Europe(e.g., Donovan and Jagt 2005) and the Cenozoic ofthe Antilles (e.g., Pickerill et al. 2003), resulting in acurrent steady influx of new, correctly identifiedspecimens. Contributions concerning significantdonated material are being encouraged to themuseum’s journal, Scripta Geologica (e.g., Blissettand Pickerill 2004).AcknowledgementsWe thank our referees, Drs J.W.M. Jagt(Natuurhistorisch Museum Maastricht) and J.T.Hannibal (Cleveland Museum of Natural History),for their constructive reviews. This is a contributionto S.K.D.’s NNHM project “Trace fossil studies”.ReferencesBLISSETT, D.J. and PICKERILL, R.K. 2004. Softsedimentichnotaxa from the Cenozoic WhiteLimestone Group, Jamaica, West Indies. ScriptaGeologica 127, 341-378.BRIGGS, D.E.G. and ROLFE, W.D.I. 1983. A giantarthropod trackway from the Lower Mississippian ofPennsylvania. Journal of Paleontology 57, 377-390.DONOVAN, S.K. 2002. A new ichnospecies ofGastrochaenolites Leymerie from the PleistocenePort Morant Formation of southeast Jamaica and thetaphonomy of calcareous linings in clavate borings.Ichnos 9, 61-66.DONOVAN, S.K. and JAGT, J.W.M. 2005. Anadditional record of Oichnus excavatus Donovan &Jagt from the Maastrichtian (Upper Cretaceous) ofsouthern Limburg, The Netherlands. ScriptaGeologica 129, 147-150.-258-
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TRACE FOSSILS IN THE MUSEUM: GUEST
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