HOW TO DIGITIZE A FOSSIL INSECT COLLECTION: DIGITIZATION PROTOCOLS AT THE VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

Identifiable insect remains are exceptionally rare in the fossil record. The Virginia Museum of Natural History (VMNH) is home to a large collection of fossil insects. The overwhelming majority of the collection comes from a fossil lagerstätte along the border of Virginia and North Carolina, representing Triassic flora and fauna known as the Solite Quarry. Some of the oldest known insect orders are found here in the Cow Branch Fm shale bed, many preserved with incredible detail of soft tissue (n = 7,493). A second nearby site from lower in the formation lies along US Route 220 in North Carolina (n = 1,289). The VMNH collection also includes material from the Early Jurassic Mount Toby Fm in Massachusetts (n = 147), insects preserved in amber from the Eocene of Lithuania (n = 18), and insects from the Eocene Green River Formation (n = 24). The primary goal of the project has been to catalogue and digitize all fossil insects at the VMNH. From this work, thousands of fossil insect records and images have been made publicly available.

Providing this information digitally invites additional research and study into the varying ecosystems of the Triassic without requiring physical presence at the museum. Digitization of the VMNH collection contributes to the larger Thematic Collections Network project of the National Science Foundation, the Fossil Insect Collaborative, making information available primarily through iDigBio. The grant is part of a collaborative proposal that includes most of the major fossil insect collections in the United States, uniting 7 different institutions, aimed at digitizing all major fossil insect collections in the United States along with their associated metadata.

At this point, a total of 8,973 of the VMNH fossil insect specimens have been photographed, catalogued and shared publicly online. The data is currently being processed by VertNet’s Integrated Publishing Toolkit to be shared with the iDigBio portal, according to Darwin Core standards. The VMNH digitization process used the photo-editing software Aperture, a digital 6D Cannon camera with a macro photo lens, StackShot, and the in-house cataloging system EGEMs (Electronic Geological Management System). The data generated by this project has already been utilized for several student projects as well as in-house research initiatives.