EXPLAINING THE PAST: CLASSICAL FOSSIL COLLECTIONS AS STUDY OBJECTS IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Classical museum collections are usually extensive and represent a certain area and/or a specific region. The Science Museum of Coimbra is holding two collections that were bought as teaching collections for the ancient Natural Science Department more than a century ago. The fossil dealers were the firm “Dr. F. Krantz, Rheinsiches Mineralien-Kontor GmbH & Co. KG” (Bonn, Germany) and Louis Saemann (1821-1866), a French mineral and fossil merchant. Both sold fossils all over the world. Specimens from “Krantz” are stored in several institutes in the United States. These collections have been taxonomically revised and specimens have been photographed and carefully stored with new updated labels. The brachiopods in these collections can be still used as a study collection for scientists and as teaching material for students and for the general public. In collaboration with the Coimbra University Press, a new series of catalogues, “THEKE,” has been established that contains the scientific and cultural heritage from collections in the Science Museum. In addition to the scientific information (taxonomic name, origin, age, inventory number, number of specimens per lot), each catalogue contains the history and geographic origin of the collection, a short biological and paleontological introduction of the phylum Brachiopoda and a short explanation of the period under consideration with special focus on the paleogeography of the fossil collecting region. In order to make the scientific information available worldwide, these and forthcoming catalogues are bilingual, written in English and Portuguese, and can be ordered online [http://www.uc.pt/imprensa_uc, http://livrariadaimprensa.uc.pt, imprensaucf@ci.uc.pt].