Jeanne Kelly: supervisor of Fossil Preparation Division of Paleontology

Natural History, May, 2007

Finding Jeanne Kelly's office within the warrens of the staff-only floors of the Museum is to be reminded that behind the public exhibition halls is a working research institution with more than 200 scientific personnel. It's also not hard to believe that the Museum houses perhaps the most important fossil collection in the world, and Jeanne ensures that the specimens are ready for study, storage, and display.

"My happiest moment is going into the collection, drawer after drawer, can after can," says Jeanne, who describes fossil prep as "a juncture between art and science."

Researchers cannot study what they cannot see, after all, and, for many of her 32 years--first as a volunteer, then part-time, then staff Jeanne's job was to carefully chip away the matrix surrounding fossils brought from the field to the lab. Her specialty was tiny mammals, early insectivores, working under a microscope with miniature jackhammers and carbide needles to expose teeth and inner ear regions on specimens as small as one-half inch.

Between 1990 and 1996, Jeanne moved from the micro-world to the macro- for the renovation of the fossil halls on the Fourth floor during which "every specimen was moved, cleaned, and remounted." She is now co-director of a similar undertaking, the transfer of the Fossil mammal collection, some 400,000 specimens, as seven storage floors in the Childs Frick Building are refurbished. It's a huge job, but Jeanne is used to that From her experience in the dinosaur halls. "You don't move an Apatosaurus easily!"