Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History

Natural History, April, 2005

Home to the world's largest collection of vertebrate fossils, the American Museum of Natural History has a long and distinguished history of paleontological research around the globe. Museum scientists in the Division of Paleontology study the history of life on Earth through the discovery, analysis, and comparison of fossil remains. The Museum's history includes some of the greatest names in paleontology and some of science's most important and groundbreaking field expeditions, including Roy Chapman Andrews's seminal Central Asiatic Expeditions (1921-1930), and Barnum Brown's India-Burma Expedition (1922-1923).

The first curator of the Department of Invertebrates was hired in 1877. Under Henry Fairfield Osborn, founder of the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology in 1892 (and later Museum President), the Department's collection became the largest repository of fossils in the world. The research of Osborne's successors, George Gaylord Simpson, Edwin H. Colbert, and Bobb Schaeffer, established the Museum's central role in the study of paleozoogeography, the "Evolutionary Synthesis" theory, and functional morphology.

Currently, Mark A. Norell, an expert on "feathered" dinosaurs as well as coelurosaurs, is Curator and Chairman of the Division of Paleontology. Among other projects, Dr. Norell is working with Joel Cracraft, Curator in the Division of Vertebrate Zoology, on a project illustrating the family relationships among all archosaurs, a group that includes modern birds and their dinosaurian relatives.

Along with Michael J. Novacek, Senior Vice President, Provost, and Curator, Dr. Norell has co-led 15 joint expeditions since 1990 to the Gobi Desert of Mongolia with the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. These expeditions have yielded spectacular discoveries: the Gobi has preserved a broad spectrum of creatures, from towering dinosaurs to tiny mammals, all in exquisite detail.

In the past decade, Dr. Norell has also been making annual visits to China to confer with paleontology colleagues at Beijing University, the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing. These visits enhance the productive exchange of research that has developed between these Chinese institutions and the Museum and allow the study of the newest fossils collected from rich fossil beds in China.

Dr. Novacek has also conducted extensive research on the evolutionary relationships of extinct and living mammals, drawing upon evidence from the fossil record and molecular biology. In 1993, he was one of the discoverers of Ukhaa Tolgod, the richest Cretaceous fossil site known in the world.

Other Division curators include Niles Eldredge, an evolutionary theorist whose curatorial colleagues in the Division include Eugene S. Gaffney, an expert on the evolution of turtles; John J. Flynn, who studies the evolution of mammals; Neil H. Landman, an expert on ammonoids (now extinct) and nautiloids (persisting today as the genus Nautilus); John G. Maisey, who studies extremely rare shark fossils; and Jin Meng, who studies the evolutionary relationships among early mammals.

COLLECTIONS

The American Museum of Natural History's paleontology collection contains an estimated five million fossil specimens collected over 125 years. Archival materials also contribute to the value of the collection, which is visited by more than 100 scientists each year. With support from NASA, Division staffers have been developing a digital database of the Museum's paleontology collection to enhance access and study.

The Museum's vertebrate paleontology collection is the largest and most diverse of its kind, including more than one million specimens and filling 13 rooms. Due to space and fragility concerns, few of these holdings can be displayed in exhibits. To ensure the preservation of these irreplaceable prehistoric specimens, in November 1999, the Division moved its dinosaur collection and its invertebrate type collection into the C. V. Starr Natural Science Building, a new eight-story facility with state-of-the-art climate-controlled storage.

With the acquisition of James Hall's massive collection of Paleozoic fossils in 1873, the Museum's invertebrate paleontology collection was launched. It now exceeds four million specimens. These collections include a large number of North American ammonite (prehistoric marine animals) fossils that are extremely informative about the history of life, the age of rocks in which they are found, and the location of prehistoric seas.

The Division houses two preparation laboratories--one for vertebrates and one for invertebrates--each equipped for mechanical, micro, acid, and mechanized preparation techniques.

The combination of the Museum's superlative fossil collection, outstanding facilities, highly skilled support staff, and world-class curatorial cadre all reflect the Division of Paleontology's illustrious past while also promising a bounty of new discoveries and fascinating insights for years to come about the history of Earth's living creatures.