[Nhcoll-l] Imaging taxidermy/mounted exhibition specimens for databasing

[Rowe, Timothy B]

Taxidermy mounts often contain skulls, bones of the hands and feet, and other bones.  In the case of rare and extinct taxa, taxidermy mounts may be the only source of "new" osteological material.  For example, we CT scanned a mount of an Ivory billed woodpecker (last seen alive in 1986), and the scans show that a good deal of its skeleton was incorporated into the mount.  If you would like to see for yourself, there is an image on DigiMorph, at the following URL:

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__digimorph.org_specimens_Campephilus-5Fprincipalis_CU51246_&d=DwIFAw&c=cjytLXgP8ixuoHflwc-poQ&r=LpYc_Z_iN1KRw0hheb3x6-8MJUMu482qfHowpGYJqwc&m=BKhSKCOxyM5eEwY92XYq8phkZq7cLp-I_PjQkMvS4kM&s=tp-f6jtXFDKCbXz4BbO1saCAxkK9BXtwXYpegVqV3DI&e=    
Click "About this Specimen" to see a digital radiogram of the mounted specimen and what it contains.

CT may be overt the top if you are simply interested in screening taxidermy mounts for internal contents, but conventional radiography is inexpensive and may suffice in many cases.

Tim



Timothy Rowe
J. Nalle Gregory Regents Professor of Geology
Curator, Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory
Director, High Resolution X-ray Computed Tomography Facility

Mail to:
Jackson School of GeoSciences C1100
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712

phone: 512-471-1725 (Department)
fax: 512-471-9425 (Department)

Digital Morphology: www.DigiMorph.org
High Resolution X-ray CT Facility: www.ctlab.geo.utexas.edu/
Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory: www.utexas.edu/tmm/vpl/
Jackson School of Geosciences: www.geo.utexas.edu/


________________________________________
From: nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> on behalf of Huong Lien Tran <huong.tran at uq.net.au>
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2017 4:25 AM
To: NHColl
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] Imaging taxidermy/mounted exhibition specimens for  databasing

Hi all,


Our museum recently got hold of old taxidermy/mounted exhibition specimens of mostly birds and mammals. While they're not display of highest aesthetic quality, and probably won't be brought out for the public in a long time,  they still hold many values, and will be added to our future online collections. Therefore, I am curious to hear from other museums on:


(1) Specimens tag/information included:  What sorts of information do you normally put in with taxidermy, mounted exhibition specimens not on display. I know there are standard information on research specimens, but our exhibition ones were normally prepared from confiscated remains and dead zoo animals then transferred to the museum, thus not much data were recovered.


(2) Specimens imaging: How to take good photo of them, and make them look good for putting on web? Since none of us are really skilled with image capturing and manipulation. Which angle do you normally take? What's resolution are standard?


We would also appreciate some examples from your museums, as more reference are always appreciated!


I attached some photo of the specimens mentioned above currently in our repository.


----

Huong-Lien Tran
Curator assistant, Department of Specimen Collection Management
Vietnam National Museum of Nature, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology
18 Hoang Quoc Viet Street, Nghia Do, Hanoi, Vietnam
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.vnmn.ac.vn&d=DwIFAw&c=cjytLXgP8ixuoHflwc-poQ&r=LpYc_Z_iN1KRw0hheb3x6-8MJUMu482qfHowpGYJqwc&m=BKhSKCOxyM5eEwY92XYq8phkZq7cLp-I_PjQkMvS4kM&s=ffYx2_cvZXyB7iw5FpGrRoXyTz7RtLAFVsmnmm049-o&e=