SPPC 2014 York
2014, York:
Talks:
- Opening up the dipnoan brain: new insights from the cranial endocast of Dipterus valenciennesi. Tom Challands.
- Challenges encountered during the preparation by acid-resin transfer of fossil fish from Monte Bolca, Italy. Mark Graham and Lu Allington-Jones
- Evolutionary history of antlers in Cervidae (Ruminantia, Artiodactyla, Mammalia). Nicola Heckeberg.
- GB/3D fossil types online – not only the largest collection of 3D digital fossils, but also of major format, schema and vocabulary conundrums. Mike Howe.
- Resourcing palaeontological collection care in a time of crisis: The legacy of the Earth Science Review twenty years on. Jeff Liston.
- Preparation of Ardiolus sp? From the Eocene Mo clay in Denmark: New approaches in acid preparation. Frank Osbaeck.
- The Upper Jurassic marine reptiles from Spitzbergen: from field conservation to laboratory preparation. Aubrey Roberts.
Posters:
- A tale of two Mysticeti. Nigel Larkin
- Using infrared thermal imaging as a collections management tool. Nigel Larkin.
- The NHM Kimmeridge Clay Ichthyosaur Collection Project. Sandra Chapman.
Challenges encountered during the preparation by acid-resin transfer of fossil fish from Monte Bolca, Italy by Mark R Graham and Lu Allington-Jones
Natural History Museum, London
The Monte Bolca outcrops near Verona, Italy, represent a limestone Lagerstätte containing extremely well-preserved fossil fishes of Eocene age. The area was discovered in the 16th century and has so far produced around 250 fish species along with crocodiles, snakes, invertebrates and plants. Due to their undisturbed but two-dimensional nature, the fossil fishes from Monte Bolca are ideal for preparation by the resin transfer technique.
The collections at the Natural History Museum, London, UK (NHM) contain numerous specimens prepared by this method. These have been created over several decades and with varying success. Unfortunately the exact processes and the names of resins used are not all fully documented. This presentation outlines the issues encountered during the application of the resin transfer technique to five fish requested for active research. It also includes a comparison of a selection of resins which are currently commercially available.
Evolutionary history of antlers in Cervidae (Ruminantia, Artiodactyla, Mammalia)
Nicola S. Heckeberg1,2,3, Gertrud E. Rössner1,2,4, Robert J. Asher3
1) Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Department for Earth and Environmental Sciences, Palaeontology & Geobiology, Munich, Germany
2) SNSB-Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie, Munich, Germany
3) Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
4) GeoBio-CenterLMU, Munich, Germany
Antlers are unique organs and the synapomorphy of Cervidae (deer). They are branched, osseous outgrowths of the frontal bone, which are shed and rebuilt in intervals. The fossil record of the early Miocene yielded the oldest known antler remains, which were interpreted as non-shed, because of supposed perpetual skin coverage and the lack of a burr (= well-developed osseous protuberance around the antler’s base, always present in extant cervids). A typical indicator for antler shedding is an even, porous, and smooth abscission surface at the proximal end of the antler without sharp breaking edges and with a convex or concave topology; the separation between the deciduous antler and the permanent pedicle appears in the same transversal plane. We undertook comparative morphological scrutiny of the abscission area of antlers from extant cervids (burr-bearing) and of fossil cervids, including burr-less antler fragments of the earliest cervids, such as Procervulus, Acteocemas, and Ligeromeryx from several European early and mid Miocene sites. The results indicate the presence of the antler shedding mechanism in all studied early/mid Miocene cervids, suggesting that a burr is not required to shed antlers. Based on this evidence, we conclude that permanent antlers have not yet been demonstrated and that the process of shedding and regeneration occurred with the first appearance of these organs.
GB/3D fossil types online - not only the largest collection of 3D digital fossils, but also of major format, schema and vocabulary conundrums
Mike Howe, Simon Harris and Tim McCormick
British Geological Survey
The ICZN and the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants require that every species or subspecies has a type specimen to define its characters. With time, collections have been moved or amalgamated, and type specimens can deteriorate or become lost. The partners in the Jisc funded project, the British Geological Survey, the Sedgwick Museum Cambridge, the National Museum Cardiff, the Oxford Museum of Natural History and the Geological Curators’ Group (representing other national, university and local museums) have collaborated to create an online database of British macrofossil types: www.3d-fossils.ac.uk .
The web portal provides data about each specimen, searchable on taxonomic, stratigraphic and spatial criteria. High resolution photographs, stereo anaglyphs and many 3D digital models are available. The portal is equally accessible to academia and the public, and represents the largest online collection of virtual fossils. It is improving the quality and efficiency of research, reducing unproductive loans and visits, and providing a valuable resource for amateur palaeontologists and the public. The project’s
progress since its launch one year ago will be reviewed. Combining 2,500 years of legacy data proved a major challenge. Museum databases – even different implementations of the same product – tend to use different schemas and different dictionaries. The lack of general agreement over file formats necessitated careful consideration of the options. JPEG2000 was selected for images, because of its speed in accessing large files, and .PLY (relatively small file size) and .OBJ (flexibility) were chosen for 3D digital models.
Nigel Larkin
1 - University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge 2 - Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service
In 2009 the partial skeleton of a large and fragile 5,200 year-old baleen whale was excavated in coastal sediments in Abu Dhabi (UAE). In 2013 a similar sized (70-ft long) skeleton of a 150 year-old finback whale that had been suspended from a ceiling for 25 years outside the Zoology Museum of Cambridge University was cleaned, dismantled and moved into temporary storage for the duration of a refurbishment project. In Abu Dhabi the 4m long fragile skull was in a few pieces due to taphonomic processes in the burial environment. In Cambridge the 4.5m long skull was complete and weighed over a tonne. Despite the whales’ very different contexts and ages and the fact that one skeleton had to be lifted from desert sediments and transported several miles whilst the other skeleton had to be removed from its mount and moved fifty metres, some of the processes used were very similar. The excavated skeleton had to be cleaned and recorded, assessing the sediments and taphonomic processes evident at the site. The displayed skeleton had to be cleaned and the way it was mounted and suspended had to be recorded in detail to facilitate remounting in a couple of years. Interesting pathologies exhibited by the bones were noted in both cases. In particular, both projects necessitated constructing protective and supportive frameworks around the skulls and mandibles, bolting together lengths of galvanised steel ‘Unistrut’ to enable the large and heavy yet fragile specimens to be safely moved with airjacks and cranes.
Using infrared thermal imaging as a collections management tool.
Nigel Larkin
Natural-History-Conservation.com
A palaeontology collection may contain specimens with conflicting environmental requirements. Therefore the (sometimes subtle) differences in environmental conditions within a collections storage area or display area should be exploited appropriately if the different microenvironments can be identified and quantified. Digital infrared thermal imaging cameras can be used to measure and visualise even subtle temperature gradients within a store instantly and accurately, to provide a much more detailed understanding of the complexities of a three-dimensional space than any other datalogging equipment can currently provide. The differences in temperature can be used to infer likely differences in relative humidity levels as well. Digital infrared images present their temperature data immediately in a highly visual format that is generally intuitively understood but it can also be very easily numerically analysed with the software so that areas within and between images can be compared. Using an infrared camera to investigate storage or display areas will reveal, for instance, temperature gradients due to stratification, hot spots, cool drafts, damp patches and unlagged heating pipes under floors etc – all of which would otherwise be invisible. Whilst infrared cameras are sometimes used in museums to investigate where energy (and therefore finances) can be conserved, their application for collections management purposes is rare simply due to a lack of awareness of how the technology can be usefully applied. Several factors influence the accuracy of the interpretation of the data so training is required.
Resourcing palaeontological collection care in a time of crisis: The legacy of the Earth Science Review, twenty years on.
Jeff Liston
Yunnan University
The current round of cuts resulting from the global financial crisis once again places museum collections in a vulnerable position in terms of resource allocations from national, regional and private funders. Often, cuts in institutional funding are proposed in the context of being intended to reshape an organisation for a more streamlined role, better designed to meet the challenges of the future. But however well museums are redesigned, they rarely escape being viewed as legitimate targets for funding cuts whenever a new round of belt-tightening comes up. The inherent implication of the language of institutional reshaping is that a certain amount of protection, if not immunity, will be conferred on the museum come the next round – but that rarely happens. This is true across the range of funders: it is simply hard in political terms for funders to justify resources going to cultural preservation instead of hospitals or nursery education. Within museums, geological collections traditionally have a particularly hard time in terms of funding and justifying their existence. Whereas artworks, archaeological, historical or ethnographic objects appear to have an intuitively obvious value to external assessors, arguing the case for natural science in general, and geology in particular, has always been an uphill struggle. This presentation will review how an unusual manifestation of this phenomenon in the late 1980s - the Earth Science Review, when cuts in funding actually led to an increase in long-term funding for some geological museum collections - has survived to the present day.
Preparation of Ardiodus sp? from the Eocene Moclay in Denmark: New approaches in acid preparation.
Frank Osbæck
Museernes Bevaringscenter i Skive
During 14 months from summer 2012, an 80cm long fish specimen, probably Ardiodus which is also known from the London clay, was prepared at Museernes Bevaringscenter I Skive. The concretion containing the large exceptionally well preserved fish was approximately 95x75 cm large, 25 cm thick, weighing more than 90 kg. It consisted of 5 large pieces and around 100 small fragments. The normal procedure at our lab is to use an epoxy, Araldite 20-20 as adhesive. Its extremely low viscosity allows the parts of the specimens to be pressed very tightly together, avoiding even the slightest gaps between bone fragments. Resins are not entirely acid resistant and will swell considerately (up to 10%) during acid preparation when it goes on for as long as it takes to prepare the large concretions (months). This would not be acceptable in this case, as the entire length of the fish was split in two, lengthwise. The swelling would pry the very fragile bones apart and could have caused a large part of the specimen to be lost. It was decided, after tests on other specimens, to use Paraloyd B72 as an adhesive, itself not entirely acid resistant but featuring other advantages that were essential in this context. The result is a very beautiful fossil featuring extraordinary details and very interesting taphonomic information.
The Upper Jurassic marine reptiles from Spitsbergen: from field conservation to laboratory preparation
Aubrey Jane Roberts 1,2, May-Liss Knudsen Funke2, Victoria Engelschiøn Nash 2,3, Patrick Scott Druckenmiller4 and Jørn Harald Hurum2
1 - University of Southampton, 2 - University of Oslo Natural History Museum, 3 - Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 4 - University of Alaska Museum
Ten years of field excavation and lab preparation of the Upper Jurassic marine reptiles from the Slottsmøya Member of central Spitsbergen, have yielded new techniques in Arctic field excavation and the following preparation. Here we present these new methods and their results, which may be of use to others considering excavation in high latitude environments. Unique field techniques have been devised to work under harsh Arctic conditions, using limited electrical equipment. Varying lithologies during field collection; from paper shale, iron stone to frozen fresh shale require different field conservation and excavation techniques. All the specimens were collected in thawed or frozen permafrost, and are therefore subject to congelifraction, often resulting in heavily fragmented material. Each individual specimen is in a unique state of preservation, which can also vary throughout the preserved material. Respectively, each of these different types of preservation requires a different type of preparation, resulting in the development of new methods of laboratory preparation. A combination of different cleaning techniques along with the use of a stabilizing polyvinyl acetate temporary adhesive and permanent adhesives, has made the preparation of these specimens feasible.