[Nhcoll-l] [EXTERN] Advice about the Use of Natural History Collections in Dissertation Project

[Catherine Early (she/her)]

Hi Emmaleigh,

I have a few suggestions as it sounds like you are interested in working
with modern specimens that would come from a biology or mammalogy
collection, and are unfamiliar with that sphere since you work in
anthropology. Apologies if I've misunderstood your request and share
information that you already know.

I second the others on this thread who suggest trying to borrow specimens
from other museums. You only need to CT scan the skull, correct, not the
full body? In that case, I would go to the iDigBio portal
<https://portal.idigbio.org/portal/search>, enter the scientific name of
one of the species you want to sample in the appropriate field and enter
"skull" in the general field at the top of the search records area. This
should bring up a lot of options from many different museums, and you can
hit the "download" tab in the search records area to export it as a CSV. If
you do this for all of the species of interest, you can then collate them
and figure out if there is one institution that has everything you're
looking for and submit a single loan request to them, or at least figure
out which institutions have a lot of what you need and only submit a few
loan requests. I believe your institution has a large-bore CT scanner on
campus that was used for scanning large-bodied museum specimens for the
Open Vertebrate (oVert) project, if that would make the loaning
institutions more comfortable than the specimens traveling further off-site
to a hospital scanner.

You could also search for your species of interest on MorphoSource
<https://www.morphosource.org/> to see if someone has already uploaded CT
scans of those skulls that you could measure. I suspect most of the scans
of specimens of that size are going to be surface scans, not CT scans, but
it's worth a look. Good luck!

Best,
Catherine


Catherine M. Early, PhD

*she/her/hers*

Barbara Brown Chair of Ornithology

cearly at smm.org

https://catherineearly.wixsite.com/home




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On Tue, Jul 8, 2025 at 12:59 AM Dirk Neumann <d.neumann at leibniz-lib.de>
wrote:

> Hi Emmaleigh,
>
> as Andy said, it is a bit unclear what exactly the underlying problem is.
> If the institution you approached is outside of the US or in South Africa,
> shipping of the (rare) specimens might be a real issue, as Jacqui pointed
> out.
>
> This especially, since this material is not only archaeological and South
> African, but also bovine, which puts a lot of red flags on such a shipment
> - even though most of them are not justified. However, if the material is
> to be shipped from South Africa, then the options the institution there
> might have to ship are limited, and the question would be if this option
> ensures proper import to the US through a designated port that is able to
> handle and deal with USFWS and APHIS requirements. There also might be
> legal limitation in the first place to send the material abroad, if this
> material comes from an iconic excavation site and is a national monument or
> of national importance.
>
> If the "removing specimens from collections" to "a full body CT scanner at
> a nearby hospital" would means transporting the specimens basically within
> the same town from the collection to the hospital, it might be internal
> procedures of this institution that hinder this. And again, there might be
> several reasons for this - depending where this institution/collection is
> situated.
>
> But there might be a completely different reason.
>
> Being closely connected to the archaeozoological community via my partner,
> I know that some archaeozoological collections simply have become very
> restrictive spending their entire curatorial time for searching their huge
> collections for individual requests without even having any scientific
> benefit. Even though the necessary determination work for extracting the
> correct bone material is exclusively burdened to them.
>
> If this a huge excavation site with a lot of material from diggings, the
> reason might simply that there are 30-50 moving boxes with bone debris. The
> material in there is sorted according to excavation layer, i.e. you cannot
> pick "the tooth or teeth" from the collection, but you need to search the
> entire wild mixture containing all sorts of bones and bones fragments. If
> this collection only has one curator, this person has to go through all
> those boxes, look up all bags, sort them and isolate and remove the desired
> bones. This may take 2-3 days.
>
> Keep in mind: these collections are not assorted to species, but arranged
> as archaeological collections, i.e. according to site, layer, excavation
> campaign.
>
> Therefore, it would be worth considering offering to travel to this
> institution and offer help to search and extract the correct material you
> want to work with from the excavation findings. This would have the
> advantage that you could then do the collections 2-D imaging with a simple
> camera is frequently done in zooarchaeology, or carry the bones to the
> hospital and - after you are done with your scanning - offer your support
> to this collection to sort the teeth back exactly to those bags where the
> teeth were isolated from. Which again is very time consuming.
>
> Last but not least, there might be completely different reasons. Thus it
> might be worth reaching out to the zooarch list as well; this is the list
> server of ICAZ, the International Council of Archeozoology, and THE PLACE
> where the dear zooarchaeology colleagues discuss and seek advice.
> https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=zooarch
>
> Hope this helps
> Dirk
>
>
>
> Am 07.07.2025 um 21:38 schrieb Emmaleigh Grady:
>
> Hello,
>
> My name is Emmaleigh Grady and I am a PhD student at Texas A&M University
> studying biological anthropology. I am currently entering the data
> collection stage of my dissertation, but have run into an issue related to
> the use of natural history collections. A mentor of mine suggested reaching
> out to this listserv to see if any members might be willing to work with me
> or could offer advice. I thank you in advance for any help you can give.
>
>
> For my project, I aim to create an expanded and improved ecometric
> protocol based on bovid dental metrics and apply it to South African
> hominin sites. The first step in this project involves creating the
> ecometric model using modern African bovid specimens. Several of the
> metrics in my protocol will be measured with calipers, but an accurate
> crown height measurement for a hypsodonty index requires looking inside of
> the bone. I have considered many avenues for getting this image (medical,
> veterinary, dental portable x-ray machines, micro-CT scanners), but it
> seems the most efficient and cost effective method for obtaining 2-D images
> of many specimens quicky would be a full body CT scanner at a nearby
> hospital. The idea would be to place several specimens on the bed at a time
> and capture them all at once. Unfortunately, this would involve removing
> specimens from collections, and therein lies the issue.
>
>
> This summer I secured funding for a pilot project to solidify this
> methodology to inform dissertation funding requests, but the museum I had
> approached wasn’t able to work with me. It is extremely important for me to
> conduct a pilot study to ensure the method is appropriate, functional, and
> to the practicalities surrounding it for planning purposes. Fortunately for
> a pilot study, I could accept a a sample size smaller than needed for
> dissertation and I would only require modern species.
>
>
> As an biological anthropologist with a special interest in
> paleoanthropology I am very aware of the importance of natural history
> collections that they are irreplaceable. I have experience in several
> museums working with specimens of variable age, rarity, and fragility. I
> say this to emphasize that I understand the responsibility and care
> required to perform this project.
>
>
> As a young researcher I am just beginning to  learn about the norms and
> limitations of working with institutions. Though my advisor and myself
> think this is a doable project, I wanted to reach out to the collections
> community before it became too late to pivot if needed. Again, I thank you
> and appreciate any help or advice you can give me. Also, feel free to reach
> out if you have any questions about the project.
>
>
> Have a lovely day,
>
> Emmaleigh Grady
>
> PhD Student at Texas A&M University
>
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> *Dirk Neumann*
>
> Collection Manager, Hamburg
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>
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> Stiftung des öffentlichen Rechts;
> Generaldirektion: Prof. Dr. Bernhard Misof (Generaldirektor), Adrian
> Grüter (Kaufm. Geschäftsführer)
> Sitz der Stiftung: Adenauerallee 160 in Bonn
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