[NHCOLL-L:3627] RE: Are study skins passe? Looking for interviewees.

Fri Nov 2 07:32:01 EDT 2007

I'd suggest she talk with Tim Rowe at UT Austin, who is using  high
resolution x-ray computed tomography to scan fossils and create
three-dimensional images that can be more fully manipulated and viewed than
rare originals, and also can be viewed-- just like our  MRI for our bodies.
This cannot be done WITHOUT the specimen. He was just featured on the new
"Wired Science" tv series on public broadcasting -- the hotlink to the story
is on the weblink below. 

http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience/story/62-x_raying_ancient_history.html

Bobbie Faul-Zeitler

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nhcoll-l at lists.yale.edu [mailto:owner-nhcoll-l at lists.yale.edu]
On Behalf Of Elizabeth Merritt
Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2007 3:40 PM
To: NHCOLL-L at lists.yale.edu
Cc: Eileen Goldspiel
Subject: [NHCOLL-L:3625] Are study skins passe? Looking for interviewees.

Dear Colleagues, 

AAM has been approached by Mary Roach, the author of the New York Times
bestseller Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. (Ms. Roach has
written for Outside, National Geographic, Wired, New Scientist, The New York
Times Magazine, and NPR’s "All Things Considered." She is a Frequent
Contributor at the New York Times Book Review, a former columnist for
Salon.com and a Contributing Editor at the science magazine Discover. )

She is looking into a possible short feature for the Atlantic—an article
about whether traditional museum specimen collections are being rendered
passé by DNA tests. 

“Once upon a time”, she writes “taxonomists would differentiate between two
identical-looking, say, spiny rats, by comparing the baculi (penis bones).
Now you just look at the DNA.  The classic specimen collection is an
endangered species.  As with library card catalogues a few years back, I'm
imagining there's some controversy over whether to maintain them or quietly
throw them out.  Whom would you suggest I talk to?  For the story to work,
I'd need to find some fabulously esoteric specimen collection that's in
danger of being given the heave-ho.”

If you have any ideas about whom we might suggest for her to talk to, or any
“esoteric specimen collection in danger of being given the heave-ho” as it
is supplanted by DNA collections, please reply to me and to Eileen Goldspiel
at AAM before close of business on Friday, November 2. Thank you!  (And
please don’t write back to me to explain all the reasons that the thesis per
se is wrong—I bet I can think of all your arguments ahead of time! But it
would be nice to see natural history collections, and their uses, get
national coverage in the Atlantic, don’t you think?)

Elizabeth Merritt 
Director, Museum Advancement & Excellence 
SPNHC Liaison to the RC-AAM
American Association of Museums 
1575 Eye Street N.W., Suite 400 
Washington, DC 20005 
(202)218-7661

Plan now to attend the 2008 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo™
www.aam-us.org/am/08

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