The National Science Foundation Biological Research Collections grant best practices presented at the KE EMu® Users Group Meeting at the New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, New York:
View the Presentation [QuickTime 7 MB]
NOW AVAILABLE!
Downloadable taxonomic trees for importing to your database!
Taxonomic tree – Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Volume H (1 & 2), 1965 – Download
Taxonomic tree – Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Volume H (1 through 6), 1997-2007 – Download
View PDFs of these files:
Taxonomic tree – Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Volume H (1 & 2), 1965 – View
Taxonomic tree – Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Volume H (1 through 6), 1997-2007 – View
Try our new Brachiopod Conversion Tool
With this tool, you can enter a brachiopod family name from the original
(1965) edition or the revised (1997-2007) edition of the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Volume H: Brachiopoda and compare the taxonomic trees between the two editions!
Feel free download our Brachiopod taxonomy transition chart.
This chart explains the revisions made to the Treatise on Invertebrate
Paleontology, Volume H: Brachiopoda.
You are welcome to use this PDF or a printout of this PDF for
educational purposes.
Please email Susan (susan.butts@yale.edu), if you have additions to
this chart that you would like to recommend.
History and Importance | Recent Work | Proposed Work | Collection Use
This collection is one of the Museum’s treasures. The Schuchert
Collection of Brachiopods consists of nearly 1,000 drawers of
brachiopods collected or acquired by Charles Schuchert and other
curators in invertebrate paleontology. The brachiopod collection is the
second largest in the nation in volume and in terms of geographic,
stratigraphic and taxonomic representation. Approximately 30% of all
holdings in the Yale peabody Museum’s Division of Invertebrate Paleontology
are phylum Brachiopoda. The Schuchert Collection is especially rich in
Early Paleozoic species and contains hundreds of types, genotypes, and
many topotypes.
The fossils collected by Schuchert represent his lifelong
enthusiasm for paleontology. By 1888, the collection was significant
enough to attract the attention of James Hall, State Geologist of New
York, who persuaded him to move both himself and his fossils to Albany.
The collection grew steadily through 5 years at Albany, 10 years of
curatorship in the National Museum of Natural History in Washington,
D.C., and finally almost 38 years of professorship at Yale.
Because the material in the Schuchert Collection has been acquired
over a period of at least 150 years, a large part of the collection is
irreplaceable because of lost localities, inaccessibility due to
political upheaval, or the great cost involved in collecting new
material. In the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, C.O. Dunbar, R.E. King and P.B.
King collected great volumes of silicified fossil material in the Glass
Mountains of west Texas. Currently, because of private ownership there
is only very limited access to localities in the Glass Mountains.
Similarly, old localities in the eastern and midwestern United States
have been lost to land development.
The Schuchert Collection contains material from Indonesia (Timor,
Wanner 1911), Algeria (A.O.P. Oil Company and R.E. King 1961) and the
Salt Range, Pakistan (Ghosh 1932), which have travel bans imposed by the
U.S. State Department, and other countries with limited access for
political reasons. Many sites represented in the Peabody’s collections —
such as the St. Louis, Missouri outlier, areas in the Tennessee Valley,
and the Fox Hills (all sites of exceptional preservation) — are now
submerged due to the construction of dams.
Schuchert’s acquisitions while at Yale University include the
Fred Braun Collection, the Darling K. Greger Collection, and the J.W.D.
Marshall Collection. Braun was a dealer who collected fossils in the
midwestern United States and traveled Europe purchasing fossil
collections in the late 1800s. Portions of Braun’s world-class
collection were sold to the Yale Peabody Museum over the years, but it
was not until his death that the entire collection was purchased and
moved from precarious storage conditions under the Brooklyn Bridge to
the Peabody. The Greger Collection, approximately 200 drawers, was
purchased by Schuchert in 1924 and is composed mainly of invertebrate
fossils from the mid-continent. The collection also benefited from many
shrewd exchanges with the National Museum of Natural History and the
American Museum of Natural History. The highlight of Schuchert’s large
personal collection is material collected with W.H. Twenhofel, C.O.
Dunbar, and many other graduate students in the Ordovician and Silurian
of Maritime Canada.
Schuchert was president of Geological Society of America and
winner of the Penrose Medal (the highest achievement in the society),
president of the Paleontological Society, recipient of the Hayden Gold
Medal from the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science, and was elected
to the National Academy of Sciences in 1910. He is the author of the
original Bibliography of North American Brachiopods.
The Division of Invertebrate Paleontology recently moved the Schuchert Collection of Brachiopods from the Kline Geology Laboratory to our new facilities in The Class of 1954 Environmental Science Center.
Concurrent with the move, a brachiopod specialist was hired to
reorganize the Schuchert Collection according to the revised brachiopod
volumes of the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology (Kaesler,
ed., 1997, 2000, 2002). The arrangement of brachiopods in the revised
classification will facilitate systematic and phylogenetic studies by
providing a better framework for the comparison of specimens. This phase
also involved the incorporation of former teaching collections, former
exhibits (including the Hall of Invertebrates specimens), and recently
acquired and orphaned collections. This material makes a significant
contribution to the Schuchert Collection as it represents exhibit
quality examples of morphological features and intraspecific variation.
The Divison’s goal is to facilitate the use of the brachiopods
by future researchers and to promote public education. We aim to upgrade
this collection to the highest curatorial standards, incorporate
valuable collections from the stratigraphic collection, and create an
online photographic database with information about brachiopods and the
revised brachiopod classification. The Yale Peabody Museum is committed
to the growth and improvement of the collections. In the last 3 years a
modern collections facility has been built and the Division has welcomed
a new curator and collections manager. We are in the ideal position to
undertake an extensive project that will enhance our important
brachiopod collection and make it more accessible to researchers,
students and the public.
Brachiopod researchers are encouraged to visit the brachiopod
collections at the Yale Peabody Museum. The collections are housed in
the new Class of 1954 Environmental Science Center.
The collection area is outfitted with compactorized storage with
significant expansion space and is environmentally controlled. There is
ample room for working on collections within the Division’s work and
fossil preparation rooms.
Most specimens from the Schuchert Collection, including type
specimens, are available for loan to institutions. In some cases, a
specimen may be deemed to fragile or environmentally sensitive to ship.
Requests to borrow Yale Peabody Museum specimens for research or exhibit
should be made in writing to the collections manager.
Requests should include the following information: the purpose of the
loan; a description of the material requested in as much detail as
possible; and where, and under whose responsibility, the specimens will
be housed while on loan.
The Yale Peabody Museum’s collections are available to legitimate
researchers for scholarly use. Loans are issued to responsible
individuals at established institutions. Loans and access to the
collection can be arranged through the Collections Manager.
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