[NHCOLL-L:839] War Ravaged Collections

[Dan Chure]

All;

I am working on a presentation on the impact of 20th century warfare on fossil
vertebrate collections.  It is ironic that the century which saw the rise of the
collection conservation discipline also witnessed the greatest destruction of
natural history collections in history. I have, over the years, gathered a fair
amount of information about the fossil losses, some first hand, most second
hand.  The bulk of the literature is about western Europe in WW II, but I am
trying to ferret out information about Eastern Europe (especially Poland),
Russia, Japan, China (especially for the Cultural Revolution), Laos, Cambodia,
etc.  My interest (in this matter) is all vertebrates, not just Mesozoic
reptiles and I suspect that lots of Pleistocene and Quaternary material was
lost.  

Has anyone ever heard of someone in the natural history collection community who
has done this kind of thing?  I would be interested in anyone working on this
general topic regardless of the material (i.e. neontological  zoological and
botanical collections) because they may have some information about fossils in
those same museums. 

Even 50 years after the end of WW II the losses are untallied -- especially in
Germany where the losses were immense. I have corresponded with a
paleo-ornithologist who is documenting the loss of fossil bird material in the
Stuttgart museum.  As she noted, people still refer in the literature to the
type specimens being in the collections, even though they were blown to
smithereens in 1945!

Dan Chure, Ph.D.
Research Scientist
Dinosaur National Monument
Box 128
Jensen UT  84035  USA
ph: 435-781-7703
dan_chure at nps.gov